Junk of the Hearts
by Aquaphobe
Summary: Kyle decided it wasn't easy to close his eyes on the truth, once they'd been forced open. SLASH! One sided Style and eventual Kyman/Cartyle.
1. Prologue

_**A/N**: Okay, so this is my first ever fanfic. I've been reading fanfictions for years and I've been obsessing over writing some myself for the same amount of time, but only now have I managed to get some balls and actually post this up. It's not neat or pretty, and I haven't planned it out, so it'll undoubtedly be a messy ride, but I hope that you can find some enjoyment in this story._

_Somewhat inspired by BratChild3's "I feel So", and "Friend Like Me" by LadyVaderWrites._

_**Warnings**: I'm an English art student, so there're bound to be mistakes with grammar, American spellings and punctuation, though I'll try my best. I have no idea if I'll up the rating later on – I'm not going to force this story in any particular direction, so yeah. The rating may eventually go up. Until then, there'll be lots of angst, onesided Style, and eventual Kyman/Cartyle. Oh, and if you don't like slash, hit the back button now. It's only going to get worse._

_**Disclaimer**: I don't own South Park or any of the characters. Wish I did, though._

_..._

**_Junk of the Hearts_**

Prologue: An Imagined Affair

Love was a strange and maddening thing. It was going to sleep every night, wondering how the person you loved felt: if they were well. Were they asleep yet? What were they dreaming?

It was something that seemed to warp time and space, defy gravity and make the impossible possible.

It was both infuriating and highly addictive.

It could mend any wound and make everything worth it – it was gratifying and all encompassing and made even the sullenest of people smile.

That was, if it was returned.

Now, Kyle Broflovski was an expert in the other kind of love. The one-sided sort, with lots of tears and heartache; longing and the great, painful knowledge that what he felt would never be returned.

This was because Kyle had, for as long as he could remember, been in love with his super best friend, Stan.

Totally, mind blowingly head-over-heels and arse-over-tits for his very clearly straight best friend.

It had always hurt in a certain way – dulled and warmed by precious sense of nostalgia – but it was alright, and it was bearable because Stan was by his side, the same as always. And Kyle knew that no one but him was Stan's closest and most trusted friend.

When they stayed up late watching Terrance and Phillip reruns and stuffing their faces with popcorn. When they tossed around a basketball in the court near the park. When they got out their old Guitar Hero game and played it for hours without a break. When they skipped lessons to go watch movies in the cinema. When they drove around in Stan's car new car, going no where in particular and just sitting in companionable silence.

When they laughed over nothing and talked about everything.

They were inseparable, and they knew each other like the backs of their hands. Kyle knew that all these things sounded really fucking gay – even to his own ears – but he couldn't bring himself to care anymore. When he was with Stan, nothing else mattered.

In all honesty, he was surprised that Stan hadn't figured out his obsession. But then, Stan lived in his own little bubble of denial: he was a cynical bastard by nature, Kyle knew, but he was also stubborn as hell. If Stan didn't want to see something – really didn't want to see something – then not even his own common sense (something he had more of than most people in South Park) would clear his vision.

As much as Stan seemed intent on living in denial and ignorance of Kyle's feelings, Kyle's line of vision extended no further than Stan. When they were together, even if they were with other people, his attention was riveted on his super best friend. When they were apart, all Kyle could think of was Stan and his dark hair, his understanding blue eyes and his stupid, goofy grin. He didn't care that they got weird looks from their parents when they sat too close together on the couch, and he didn't even give a damn when they got comments about them being queer and faggy from the fatass or Craig. He loved that they could tussle and curse at one another like all the other boys, knowing that it wouldn't ever come to proper blows. He loved that they could act like big kids when they were alone – with burping contests and Chinese burns and stupid pranks – without Stan going ahead and telling anyone else.

The thing Kyle liked most about Stan was that he listened and didn't judge Kyle for what he heard. When Kyle moaned about his mom being a bitch, Stan would just nod and say something like, 'Weak dude. That sucks.' And then Kyle would just miraculously feel better. Back when he'd cut his jewfro really short at the end of elementary because he was self conscious, Stan had just smiled and shrugged, saying he'd looked fine already. Stan didn't care that sometimes he acted like he had PMS, or that he was a diabetic Jew who didn't celebrate Christmas or Easter like everyone else did.

Kyle hadn't even brought himself to care when Stan had started dating Wendy seriously again a year or so before, because they still spent more time together than they did apart, and Stan never once bailed on Kyle when they'd arranged to do something together. Stan still got nauseous around Wendy now and then, so not only could Kyle tease and laugh at Stan like the other guys, but he didn't always have to pretend to find it funny. It had meant that they'd have to take things slow and although the direction Stan and Wendy's relationship was headed was inevitable, Kyle wouldn't have to hurt so soon.

The day that Stan had come and told him that he and Wendy had slept together, some hopelessly optimistic part of Kyle had shrivelled up and died. He'd wanted to scream and rage and cry; he'd wanted to throttle some sense into Stan and to punch his bitch of a girlfriend in her stupid fucking face. He'd wanted to, but he hadn't. Instead, he'd just smiled a painful smile and had clapped the blushing, grinning Stan on the back.

He was only grateful that Stan was too much of a gentleman to go into the details, because that was the last thing he wanted to hear.

He told himself that sex wasn't really a big deal to guys. They weren't supposed to think of it as anything emotional or deep or meaningful, so really he had no idea why he hurt so much.

Maybe it was because Kyle had selfishly surrounded himself in a lie. In a dream.

A stupid fucking dream that helped him hide from the truth.

Only an hour or so later he'd made some pathetic, transparent excuse as to having to leave (the, 'Oh, wow, is that the time? I just this second remembered that I had to do something, what a coincidence,' sort of excuse) and then he walked home through the snow. When he'd gotten home, he'd walked up to his room, sat at his desk and had tried to drown himself in algebraic equations. It wasn't nearly as melodramatic as shrieking at Stan until his throat was raw or pummelling Wendy into strawberry jelly, but he wasn't that sort of person.

He liked to pretend things were fine when they weren't, because maybe then he'd convince himself as well as everyone else, and it would hurt less. He'd only really started doing this when he'd realised he was in love with Stan, and that his friend would never like him back.

That was probably why he'd hurt so much when he'd found out.

Still, it wasn't the end of the world. He'd eventually gotten a hold of himself again, and when he had things seemed to go back to a state of relative normalcy. Well, aside from the fact that his Stan-centric world now expanded to include Wendy, too. He hated it, but he couldn't stop seeing the truth, once his eyes were opened to it.

It was horrible, yes, but he got by, gritting his teeth and imagining all the ways he could off her.

So he continued to keep all of his feelings a secret: locked away and to himself. And late at night, when he was by himself and feeling madly, desperately lonely, he'd unlock his heart and let it settle heavily in his chest. It had only grown heavier in recent weeks, but it was still manageable.

Well, right up until the morning he awoke to his best and closest childhood friend, leaning over his bedside and declaring the words, "Kyle, dude, she said yes!"

That was probably the point at which the lock on his heart crumpled inwards.

There was no lid or stopper on his emotions after that. It was pure agony.

_..._

_A/N: I really hope that you enjoyed the prologue – I know it's really introspective and dramatic, but I promise this story will have more action and less reflection in the next few chapters. So... please bear with it?_

_Oh, and please review if you can. I'm literally shaking with nerves._

_19/05/13_


	2. Chapter One

**A/N:** You who followed, favourite and reviewed (**Mollanise**,** Pigquet**,** hanareta**,** thecrazierone**, **TamiLove** and** babe**,to you all especially!), thank you again! Right now, I feel as happy as Kip Drordy when he finally got his facebook friends! I hope to heck that this next chapter's a little more interesting than the last. It's certainly longer.

Oh, and having spent the last fourteen years of my life in the British schooling system, I'm sort of clueless to the way the American system compares. I hope I got it right...

**Disclaimer:** I don't own South Park or any of the characters. Or the chapter titles, for that matter. Oh, nor the title. I do, however, own all spelling mistakes made hereon out.

_**Junk of the Hearts**_

Chapter One: Switching Off

_The sound of curtains being torn open was followed by an ungodly bright light shining straight across his face._

_Kyle mumbled obscenities under his breath and, eyes scrunched up, rolled over to bury his face into his pillow._

_Before he could make any real progress, however, the bed dipped on either side of his shoulders, and the familiar smell of spicy warmth that he'd come to associate with Stan washed over him._

_If anyone else had woken him up in this manner, he probably would have decked them, and then just gone back to sleep. It was a good thing Stan wasn't anyone else._

_Tired green eyes squinted up at the intruder with the best glare he could muster, though his heart was skipping in his chest and butterflies were fluttering to life in his stomach. Stan was leaning over him, close enough to reach out and touch: he looked so happy._

_Kyle's sleep addled mind could only really make the connection between _Stan, Bed, Smile, Close,_ and his cheeks flushed pink._

_Then, his stupidly blissful, half formed imaginations were shattered._

"_Kyle, dude, she said yes!" _

_Kyle blinked._

_Stan's grin widened at his friend's baffled expression. The butterflies died and his heart came crashing to a halt._

"_H-huh..?"_

"_It's Wendy, dude, she said yes! I mean, I wasn't planning to ask her until after college, but then last night we were together and, y'know, it just sort of felt like the right time."_

_Kyle's blood ran cold. _

"_Whoa, slow down. What... what'd you ask her?" his voice sounded strained and quiet, even to his own ears. A part of Kyle was screaming for him to just close his eyes and pretend this wasn't happening._

Please_, it was begging,_ please just stop. This can't be real. This can't be. Don't answer, please don't answer_._

_But Stan was oblivious to the internal war being fought in his friend's mind – the half desperate not to hear, versus the half that couldn't seem to stop watching and waiting – and so he just continued. "Kyle, I asked her to marry me."_

_That one, simple line sent Kyle reeling._

_It was like the ground had been ripped out from beneath his feet._

_For a long moment, there was nothing. Nothing but numbness._

_And then that moment was over, and reality crashed into him like a tidal wave._

_It felt like his heart was being crushed and his ribs splintered._

_His stomach lurched, and all he could do was shove Stan away from him, stagger to his feet, and rush out the door towards the bathroom._

...

Kyle stared blankly at his reflection in the glass of the bus window. It stared right back at him.

The eyes of his reflection were overcast and glum, the shadows underneath seeming more pronounced than ever. From this angle, he looked like some kind of zombie: all pale and expressionless.

Kyle sighed and blinked, aching eyes focussed on the moving landscape beyond his reflection. White lawns, white rooftops, white hills, white sky. _White, white, white._ Goddamn, South Park was boring to look at. It didn't help that he saw this very same view at least once a day.

Sometimes, he reflected, it'd be nice to see some more colour—

His thoughts were cut off when someone sat down on the empty seat beside him. Only half interested, Kyle tore his eyes away from bus window and turned slightly in his seat. All of his effort was met with the back of a head. Or, more accurately, the back of a _hood_.

The occupant of said hood was apparently engaging in a deep and meaningful conversation with the person in the seat across the aisle. Listening in a little harder, Kyle caught what sounded suspiciously like, "...the most rocking hot tits, dude."

And then, "Oh, r-really? Oh, er, well that's... That's mighty fine, I guess."

Kenny and Butters. How the fuck hadn't he seen them there?

Actually, when _was_ the last time he'd seen them – at all?

He thought back over the last few weeks, but everything was a blur, like usual. School seemed to have gone in and out of focus, and the faces that went by seemed to swim just out of sight, as if he'd only really spared them a brief glance. Of course, the rest of his attention had been on—

Had been—

His stomach clenched and his throat burned. It felt as though lumps of lead were forming in both. Oh, God, he couldn't. He couldn't think about that right now.

He didn't think he would be able to stay in one piece.

His shoulders pulled up and he quickly spun back around to the window.

Kyle tried his best to steady his breathing and blink back the encroaching tears, the image of Stan leaning over him flashing to life in his minds eye.

_"Kyle, dude, she said yes!" _He squeezed his eyes shut and willed the voice away, but it just kept on replaying, like some sort of sick funeral march. _"...She said yes!"_

He was insane, he knew he was. There was no other explanation for his stupidity. How could this have possibly surprised him? It was clear as day that Stan and Wendy were in this for the long run. You'd have to be blind to miss the meaningful looks and the lingering touches they gave each other.

But then, he supposed that he _had_ been blind. He'd been looking at his world through rose tinted spectacles, and it was only when they'd been forcefully ripped off that he saw it wasn't _his _world at all. It was Stan and Wendy's.

It always had been.

"_...Dude, she said—"_

"Jesus, Ky, you alright?" Kyle's eyes shot open and, fingers trembling where they knotted in the hem of his jacket, he peered back over his hunched shoulders.

A pair of pale blue eyes stared back at him from below scruffy, straw-blond bangs and the fluffy rim of a parker hood. Although the expression on Kenny's face was obscured, it was still easy to see he was worried.

Kyle took a little while to process his friends words, but when they finally registered in his sleep deprived mind, he said, "I'm fine, Kenny." His voice sounded strained and weak even to his own ears, but he didn't know how to remedy the situation.

"You look like horse shit," was the concerned reply.

"Thanks, dude. Really what I needed to hear," Kyle murmured, unable to hold his friend's gaze any longer.

"That's what I'm here for," Kenny said cheerfully, "to tell my friends when they're looking like ass. C'mon, what's wrong?" Perceptive Kenny might be, but compassion was definitely not his friend's forte.

"Nothing's wrong, I'm fine."

"Huh. You don't look it."

"He- he's right, Kyle," Butters piped up, his little blond face seemingly poking into existence just over Kenny's shoulder. "Are ya sure you're feelin' alright? You look awful pale." Kyle could practically hear Butters' knuckles grinding together. It felt like their eyes were pulling him apart, baring his raw emotions to the rest of the world.

"It's nothing." The logical part of him knew it was ridiculous, but he was already feeling way too sensitive to realise they were only looking out for him. He wished they'd just leave him alone to his self pity.

"Well, if ya need to talk, we're here for you, little buddy—"

"I'm fine," he snapped, and this time the words were a lot sharper. Actually, they were almost a snarl.

A brief flush of color lit up his cheeks – it was unclear whether it was in frustration or humiliation – when Butters sunk back from him, looking shocked.

Kenny held up his hands as if to say _'Whoa, calm down there,' _and just said, "Alright, dude. That's cool."

Kyle watched with narrowed eyes as both of the other boys backed off, Butters retreating back to his own seat (where he was supposed to be) and Kenny having the courtesy to turn around and leave Kyle alone.

The stupid lump in his throat climbed just a little higher – this time with a slowly dawning sense of guilt – and, gulping it back, he sank deeper into his seat.

For the rest of the bus ride, the seventeen year old stared out of the bus window at the passing scenery, trying his hardest to keep all the memories of the morning before out of his mind.

...

When the bus pulled up in the parking lot of South Park High he reached down for his bag, slung it over one shoulder and shuffled off towards the main school building.

The bus always arrived ten minutes early and so Kyle, once again left alone to his thoughts, made a quick visit to his locker for his textbooks, and then made his way to homeroom. He slipped into the room and sat silently at his desk, eyes downcast and arms folded on top.

Kenny took his seat at the desk beside Kyle, Bebe Stevens in front, and Heidi Turner behind. Kyle thanked God for this brief reprieve, as Kenny's often fickle attention was diverted to either side of him, in what Kyle had come to think of as the blond's 'morning wooing' session. The morning wooing generally consisted of Kenny waggling his eyebrows suggestively and saying things like, "Bebe, y'know what? I'd like to use your thighs as earmuffs," and "Heidi, babe, do you wash your panties with Windex? Because I can really see myself in them."

It was definitely enough to distract Kyle from the other members of homeroom filing in (and two in particular) when Bebe began returning the dirty pickup lines with acid barbed obscenities.

Kyle wasn't sure exactly how the school system operated, but somehow Mr Garrison, who'd had a job transfer to South Park High five years previous, had once again become their homeroom teacher. He didn't know what the chances of that were, but he figured that they were pretty slim.

Still, that morning Mr Garrison arrived bang on time, bursting through the door in a raging fury. His greeting was, "Sit down and shut the fuck up, you little bastards! Kenny, get your hands out of your pockets. Bill, Fosse, if you boys try just _one more time_ to flip Red's skirt, I _swear to God_, I will hand your asses to the principal. You boys disgust me, only ever thinking with your dicks!"

By this point, everyone with even a lick of sense knew not to point out the fact that Mr Garrison was, indeed, a male.

Despite Mr Garrison's impressive entrance and his following rant, the morning announcements were as bland as ever and Kyle, heart pounding a sick staccato in his chest at the thought of passing Stan's desk on the way to the door, grabbed up his stuff and practically bolted out of the room.

After escaping homeroom unscathed (and putting a reasonable distance between himself and the rest of the class) he dragged his feet towards the Chemistry lab. For most subjects, the classrooms were unlocked in the mornings so that the students could enter when they arrived and get their books and notepads ready, but this wasn't the case with the science rooms. Despite their Chemistry teacher arriving early every day to get set up for lessons, the door was always kept locked until second bell rang. Lots of people thought Mr Vanders was paranoid and batshit crazy, but Kyle sort of understood how the guy felt. Who wanted a bunch of rowdy, pubescent teenagers around a load of potentially volatile chemicals for any longer than was necessary? Plus, being locked away from the rest of the world for a few extra minutes a day sounded like a brilliant idea, just then.

To pass the time until the bell rang again, Kyle stared vacantly at the locker opposite him. He was incredibly grateful for the fact that none of his closer friends shared first period with him on Mondays. From what he knew, Stan was in Shop class along with Craig, Clyde and Cartman, while Kenny, Butters and Jimmy had Drama.

Eventually other students began milling around in the hallway. A little later still – after the rest of his class had showed up – the lock on the door clicked, and the students trailed inside.

Kyle sat down at his group table towards the back of the room and opened his textbook to the page number already up on the board. Sally Turner and Annie Faulk sat down to his right, with Kevin Stoley and Leroy Jenkins to his left. Kyle barely noticed this at all, instead getting lost in his thoughts once again.

Monday morning was always a rather pathetic affair in South Park High, as all the students recovered from long, overly-eventful weekends and sank back into the debilitating dullness of school routine.

As it was, all Mr Vanders could get from his students was grunts of affirmatives for roll call and half assed excuses as to why around ninety percent of the class had yet to hand in their Chemistry homework. Distressed as always by his students' lack of interest in his subject, Mr Vanders cancelled the class practical and instead shoved a whole load of complex theory under their noses. This decision was met by a round of groans and complaints, but Mr Vanders just jittered and twitched until the class fell into a reasonably compliant state.

Throughout all of this, Kyle turned his pen over and over in his hand, for once completely unable to keep track of what his jumpy teacher was nattering about. The explanations were too long, the problems too convoluted and the subject too dry to hold any sway with Kyle's wandering mind – especially not when he'd spent the previous night tossing and turning, sobbing himself into a stupor over a situation he held no sway over.

He was entirely drained – both mentally and physically – and so he supposed his lack of real emotion made sense. After the brief confrontation on the bus earlier, Kyle had sunk into a comfortingly numb state of mind. His stomach still clenched painfully whenever his thoughts strayed too close to _that_, but otherwise he felt like a mental fog had descended upon him, making it hard to figure out what he was feeling, (and if he was feeling anything at all).

He wasn't asked to do any group work or to pair off for the lesson, so he supposed he was grateful for the chance to keep his head down. As Kenny had so politely said, he looked like crap and he was pretty sure that, underneath the haze, he felt it too.

After first lesson, he had Double Math. Again, the lesson passed with minimal human contact and socialising, and so by fourth period he'd managed to withdraw far further into himself.

Spanish was a little less convenient, considering the fact that he was expected to practice speaking with the girl next to him. Lola was alright, he supposed, though she talked too much once she'd gotten started, and was constantly flipping her hair back over her shoulders. At least he didn't get asked any awkward questions.

Straight after Spanish was lunch.

Lunch meant a break from the tedium of lessons, and _Monday _lunch break in particular meant weekend news and the hottest gossip, fresh from the scene. Usually this contained replays of who got with who at whatever party, or how so-and-so dumped their boyfriend, but Kyle had a terrible feeling he knew what the latest gossip would be.

And so it was with dread that he made his way into the cafeteria, and towards his usual table. As he weaved his way across the lunch room, he looked up and his steps faltered.

It wasn't just the usual crowd gathered around the table – no, as well as Kenny, Butters, Stan, Wendy and Cartman, Craig and his friends had pulled a nearby table up to join them. In addition to Craig's group, a bunch of Wendy's friends swarmed around the two tables, all giggling and chatting in a distinctly irritating manner.

For a long, drawn out moment Kyle just stood and watched, head swimming and gut churning. His view of Wendy and... and Stan was partially blocked, but he caught a flash of teeth and heard a warm, familiar laugh over the noisy chatter, and a hard lump wedged itself in his throat.

Despite the fog, he realised, he just couldn't face that – face _him –_ right now.

"Hey, ass hat, you're in my way!" Kyle startled and looked around to see a younger student glaring at him. Kyle didn't recognise the guy, and on any other day might have told the kid to fuck himself and find a different way around, but his mind snatched this rude interruption up as a perfect excuse to bail on the celebration.

He jerked his head in a nod and hurriedly turned to leave, not once glancing back at the table again.

If he had, he would have seen a pair of sharp brown eyes following him out.

...

Kyle walked through the hallways aimlessly, feet moving below him in a pattern-less dance that took him wherever they wanted.

He had Phys. Ed. next, so he supposed he should go there, but...

But he didn't think that he could direct himself there, even if he had wished to. Stan would be there, and everyone knew now.

Everyone knew and would be talking about it.

He had been trying his hardest to avoid this all morning – had been trying to make himself push it aside and forget. He'd just about managed to push it all aside, even after he felt like his world was crumbling to pieces in his hands.

He'd spent all night trying his hardest to recover from the shock, and just when he'd started to believe he'd manage to get through until the end of the day, the very smallest thing had triggered this massive, crushing pain.

"_Kyle, dude, she said yes!"_

And oh, God, those words were like poison. Once it was in his head – in his blood – he couldn't stop its course. He couldn't stop the poison spreading.

He gasped in aching breaths, chest heaving and arms curled around himself.

The lump in his throat was back with a vengeance, forcing a choked sob from him. The broken sound echoed loudly in the empty corridor, but in his head it was drowned out by a rush of bitter memories.

"_...I asked her to marry me."_

"_...She said yes!"_

"_...It just sort of seemed like the right time._"

This time when the tears built up in his eyes, he stood still and let them come. His face was blank, but his hands were trembling, his complexion was pallid and a cold sweat clung to his skin like a fever.

It took only a glance his way to convince the school nurse to send him home, ten minutes later.

When he got home, he forewent his desk and his books. He just climbed under the covers, fully dressed and shivering, and curled in on himself.

He finally fell asleep to feverish nightmares of Wendy and Stan standing at the altar in a Christian church, smiling and kissing and looking so fucking perfect together it stung.

...

_A/N: yeah, so... Emo!Kyle, anyone? I originally planned this chapter to have more interaction and dialogue, but halfway through Kyle got in a strop and proceeded to write the damn thing exactly how he wanted to. I know there's a definite of our favourite fatass in this so far, but hang on in there! He'll make his grand entrance soon, I promise._

_Again, I'd love to hear your thoughts of how this chapter turned out!_

_20/05/13_


	3. Chapter Two

_**A/N: **So, in this chapter there's a lot more character interactions - mentions of side plots and other little things that'll be going on in the background from here on out.__  
_

_Oh, and I'm sorry if there are any mistakes (there probably are) I just wanted to get this out so much that I've only checked through it once - I'll check through it again later._

_**Disclaimer: **__I don't own South Park or any of the characters portrayed in my story._

_**Junk of the Hearts**_

Chapter Two: My Very Best

At first Kyle had slept in fits and starts; any rest he managed to get was filled with cruel nightmares and twisted memories. After lying awake for the most part of Monday night, despising himself for being so goddamn pathetic, he got up to dress for school.

Just when he was pulling a fresh t-shirt over his head, his cell phone bleeped from where it was charging on his nightstand.

His heart had tripped over itself when he'd read the name on the screen, but he'd eventually clicked on the icon declaring he had a new message.

'_Ky where were u yesterday? I didnt speak 2 u  
all day. Are u still ill? Do u want a lift to schl? S'_

The thought of seeing Stan so soon turned his stomach and made his mouth taste sour. It took him a full ten minutes to type out his reply, his fingers were shaking so hard.

'_Went home ill. Still feeling like shit. See you__  
tomorrow. K'_

Without really thinking his actions through, he pulled his top back off, wriggled out of his jeans and returned to the warm, welcoming depths of his bed.

Tuesday, Kyle wallowed in self pity, realised what he was doing, hated himself for it, remembered _why_ and then went right back to the self pity.

He left his room only to use the bathroom and spent a great deal of his time wiping the evidence of his tears from his cheeks, even though there was no one there to witness him falling to pieces.

He slept even less than the night before and by four in the morning on Wednesday, he'd come to an ultimatum.

Kyle didn't enjoy being miserable the way some people seemed to and he certainly didn't thrive off of other people worrying over him.

Even when he'd felt like shit in the past, he'd managed to suck it up and put on a strong front. Sure, he couldn't recall a time when he'd hurt this much before, but he hated the looks he got from his family when he crossed them on the landing, or when he joined them at the dinner table.

They knew something was wrong, and Kyle considered it a small blessing that his mom hadn't yet worked up the incentive to question him about it. He wasn't sure what his answer would be, were she to ask; he shuddered to think about how that conversation would go over (_"Hey ma, I'm super gay for Stan, but now he's asked Wendy to marry him I've realised that I've been a complete dipshit for ever thinking anything could happen between us and I've been skipping school in order to avoid facing the truth." ..._Yeah, that wouldn't go down so well).

So, he had to get his shit together, or he'd have to eventually face the music.

To say that he was enthusiastic about this – or about anything, right then – would be a lie. In all honesty, all he wanted to do was crawl under the covers, close his eyes and pretend things were different. Unfortunately though, life was a cruel bitch and there was nothing to do when things got bad but flip it the bird and move on.

Move on...

Kyle pushed the covers away, well aware that he wouldn't get another wink of sleep now that his resolve was settled. He might as well do something more productive with his time, like the revision he'd been putting off for the last few weeks. School work sucked but it was a necessity, as well as acting as a brilliant distraction.

So he switched on his desk lamp, pulled out his text books and sat down in the swivel chair. His eyes burned and itched, but every time he let them slide shut, the images from his dreams took the chance to catch him unawares. As soon as that happened, all the heart ache and loneliness bubbled back up towards the surface again. The number of times Kyle had to forcefully steady his breathing and ignore the twisting knots in his stomach were too many to count.

When the digital clock on his nightstand declared it to be six o'clock, he accepted the fact that he wasn't really making any progress on his studies, like he'd hoped to. He set aside his pen and went to shower, taking a handful of clothes with him to change into after.

By the time the rest of his family had surfaced, Kyle had changed into his day clothes (the now slightly crumpled tee from the day before, along with a pair of jeans and his favourite orange jacket) and made himself an extra strong cup of coffee.

He knew he looked like crap again today – his eyes sunken and tired, circled by dark rings and barely hidden behind curly auburn bangs – but he tried to negate this fact by sending a wide, toothy grin his mom's way.

For some reason she looked troubled. "Bubbe, are you feeling alright? You look like you're in pain." Had he been his usual self, he would have been offended. It was understandable though. He wasn't all that great at outright lying – especially not to his parents.

Deciding to tone it down a little bit, he just 'mh'ed and took another steady sip of his coffee.

When his mom finally stopped watching him like she thought he was about to keel over, and instead turned her attention to the fridge, Ike sunk down into the seat next to him and whispered loudly, "Wow, you look like ass."

Kyle narrowed his eyes at his little brother. "You sound more and more like Kenny every day."

Ike's face split into a proud grin. "Really?" he asked with far too much enthusiasm.

The seventeen year old rolled his eyes. "It's not a good thing, y'know."

Ike, taking hold of the glass of orange juice his mom had set down in front of him, just snorted. "There're far worse people I could turn out like."

He stared down into the mug cradled in his hands and supposed _that_ was true.

...

By the time the second text from Stan in two days bleeped to life on his phone, Kyle was already at the bus stop. Since Stan had gotten his car as a present from his parents for his seventeenth, Kyle had frequently gotten lifts with him. That was how most of the older students got into school.

He presumed that Kenny's excuse for being one of the few kids their age still catching the bus was that he was too poor to get his own car. Well, that or he actually _liked_ spending time with Butters.

"Hey, Ky. You feeling better? Stan said you were ill the other day." Kyle's heart jolted at the mention of Stan's name, and his fingers skimmed over the pocket in which his cell phone sat, ignored.

"Yeah dude, I think I ate something bad over the weekend. I'm pretty much over it now." He gave another of his plastered-on smiles.

Kenny watched him with a surprisingly shrewd expression for a little while before visibly shrugging it off. "Huh."

They stood in silence for a moment, both looking out across the road at the skyline.

Then, "What lesson d'you have after homeroom?" Kenny piped up.

Kyle pulled himself out of his own dark thoughts with some difficulty – they were like quicksand: the second he stuck his foot in them, he started getting dragged back down. It took a surprising amount of willpower to school his features to something more neutral. "English. Same as you."

Kenny's blond head whipped around, eyes wide. "Shit!" he cursed suddenly.

Kyle jumped.

"Dude, didn't Mrs White set us that essay?"

_Ah,_kyle thought. _That explains the panic_. "That was due in last week," he said blandly. He tried to make himself sound irritated with Kenny's tardiness, but it seemed sort of weak even to his own ears. Oh Jesus, he was shit at this acting business.

Kenny scratched the back of his head and laughed the sort of nervous laugh that said he was expecting a lecture on the subject.

Kyle thought they were _both_ grateful for the timely interruption of the school bus pulling up in front of them.

...

Kyle listened to the rapidly degenerating conversation with a morbid sense of fascination as he followed along a step or two behind them.

"Now you listen here, Kenny! You may be my- my best friend-" when had _that_happen? "-but I can't keep coverin' for you!"

"Ugh, really? You're gonna go there again?"

"My father's gonna get the wrong idea! He-he thinks you're my- you're my- well, _you know!_"

Kyle couldn't believe he was hearing this. Of all the things that could have come up in conversation that day, this was the very last that he would have expected to hear. Goddamn irony.

"No, dude, I don't know. What the fuck are you on about?" Kenny had come to a halt in the corridor, glaring across at Butters with all the heat and resentment he usually reserved for Cartman. Kyle, distracted from his own misery, looked between both blonds in puzzlement. "I mean, how the hell am I supposed to know what you're on about when you've only been freakin' out about it for the last two months? How could I possibly know that?!" The sarcasm practically dripped from his voice.

Butters was almost, _almost_ glaring back. His cheeks got progressively pinker and pinker as the strained silence drew on, until he finally just blurted out, "You're a real jerk sometimes Kenny, y'know that? And when I'm grounded for a month straight, it'll be all _your_ fault!"

And with that, Butters stormed off down the corridor and out of sight, presumably to go visit his locker.

Kyle stared at Kenny, and Kenny glared after Butters.

Then, he peered back over his shoulder at Kyle. "Damn, dude. I really don't get this whole 'best friend' thing. It's beyond me."

Kyle was just opening his mouth to give him some lame-assed reply when, out of nowhere, an arm draped itself around his shoulders. He instantly froze up.

"Me too," came a soft, slightly accusing voice just to his left. The fine hairs on the nape of his neck stood to attention, shivers of hypersensitivity running like disturbingly pleasant shock waves up and down his spine, even as his heart gave a painful squeeze in his chest. Stan. Kyle's brain felt like it was going into shutdown, tearing itself in two different directions: a sense of loyalty and the feeling of rejection. Stan, unaware as always to Kyle's internal suffering, continued. "I mean, aren't best friends meant to tell each other if they're alright? So that the other person doesn't get, like, seriously worried? Y'know, maybe reply to a message?"

A ridiculously overwhelming sense of guilt flooded through Kyle at that. Stan was right - it _would_seem like he was acting up over nothing, to the dark haired boy. Fighting for some kind of grasp over his quickly degenerating self control, Kyle made a fairly pathetic ditch attempt at salvaging the situation. "Wh-what? You sent me another message? When did you do that?" He slipped out from underneath Stan's arm as casually as he could, hand flying to his pocket to retrieve his cell phone. The light in the top corner of the screen flashed red briefly, declaring he did, indeed, have a new and unread message.

_Wow,_ he thought. _I_definitely _didn't ignore the damn thing on purpose._

He gulped, staring down at the screen in favour of meeting Stan's eyes. "Shit, dude, I guess you did message me. I must've just missed it." Was it stupid that he wanted to cry again?

To his utter shock, he heard Stan chuckle. He couldn't help but peek up at his super best friend through his bangs. He only realised that Stan had just been messing with him when he caught Kenny rolling his eyes out of his peripheral vision.

_You're a dumb shit, Kyle_, he told himself. Ridiculously enough, his eyes welled up. He blinked back the tears desperately.

"Kyle, it's fine. I'm only messing with you."

"H-heh heh, heh..." Kyle hiccupped, his smiled wan and quivering, his face downcast.

"Come on gaywads, let's get to class before first bell. If Garrison's anything like he's been the rest of the week so far, we really don't wanna be late." Kyle reminded himself to thank God for the living interference which was named Kenny McCormick later.

...

Kyle was slowly figuring out that he didn't deal well with a lack of sleep. He was feeling stressed and down as it was, but adding to that the fact that he hadn't slept properly since Sunday night, his emotions were pretty volatile. For instance, when they'd walked through the door into homeroom and Wendy materialised out of no where, wrapping her arms around Stan's neck and greeting him with a kiss, jealousy reared fiercely to life in his chest. He bit back the nasty comment that jumped to life in his throat when they pulled apart and she offered him a smile and wave over Stan's shoulder.

Eyes narrowed, he just lifted his hand in a quick reply and ducked around them, heading straight to his desk. The second he was away from them and sat down on the other side of the room, the flames of envy shrunk and shrivelled, turning into misery and an acute sense of abandonment. He tried not to watch them leaning into each other and smiling, hugging and whispering to one another like they hadn't seen each other for weeks. It was excruciatingly difficult to look away, though.

What was he, a masochist?

Anyway, the gist of it all was that homeroom passed with little drama (other than Craig getting sent to the principal's office for throwing little bits of rubber at a shrieking, jittering Tweek's back, and then proceeding to flip off Garrison the second he was reprimanded).

When homeroom was over, he walked alongside Butters at the back of the large group heading to English. Up ahead, Stan was holding hands with Wendy and talking animatedly to Token about soccer tryouts. Heidi, Nicole and Bebe were giggling over something, Kenny was trailing after the girls (eyes firmly attached to Bebe's wrack) and Cartman was debating the merits of cheesypuffs over tacos with Clyde. Tweek twitched and swore violently to himself every few steps, just behind them. He looked a little lost without Craig there to pick on him.

Kyle pulled his tired eyes away from the group ahead of him and slid his gaze sideways to Butters. Butters looked just about as cheerful as _he_ did, and was pouting down at his shiny black shoes.

Neither of them really tried to start conversation and though slightly oppressive, the silence wasn't awkward. He felt a strange sort of companionship with the oddball blond.

Mrs White, their English teacher, was a nasty old hag with a long pointed nose, wiry grey hair and a face like she was sucking a lemon. She immediately rounded on Kenny about his overdue essay, while the rest of the group took their seats and occupied themselves with various activities (mainly note passing by the girls, and making rude gestures at each other behind the teacher's back by the guys).

Kyle, however, didn't participate in any of this. He just retrieved his class notes and pretended to be immersed in them until Mrs White had finished threatening to fail Kenny and had come to stand in front of the board.

"Attention!" she screeched, shocking most of the students out of their various activities.

From somewhere to Kyle's left, there was an answering scream of "GAH! Jesus fuckin' Christ," and then the sound of a chair tipping over. Muffled laughter followed.

"Mr Tweak! If you're not going to behave, then I suggest you leave my classroom at once!"

Apparently the already twitchy Tweek had taken all he could of loud voices and sudden movements because he shot up from the floor, grabbed up his spilt books and hurtled full throttle out of the door, muttering loudly as he went, "Oh man, _oh man_, they're gonna get me!"

For some reason, Kyle seemed to find himself sympathising with the outcasts of his class more every moment. First with Butters and now with Tweek. Especially when Mrs White harrumphed and said, "Today, class, you will be working in groups of four to analyse the next chapter of Lord of the Flies."

Everyone else seemed pretty damn thrilled with this situation. Kenny was _extremely_ pleased it seemed, after having been put in a group with Red, Nicole and Bebe.

"Mr Broflovski, you will be paired with... Mr Cartman, Mr Marsh and Miss Testaburger."

Kyle's heart sank. Really, why was this happening to him? Stan _and _Wendy? On top of that, _Cartman_? He supposed that the fatass didn't really bother him all that often anymore, but with the state he was in, he could really do without having to work with the bigoted dickhead.

Kyle got set about dragging his desk closer to Cartman's, because the bastard clearly wasn't moving off his backside any time soon. Oh, and also because right then, Kyle would have preferred to spend time with Cartman, than with Stan or his bitch of a girlfriend.

_Ugh,_ he thought to himself in genuine disgust, _that's something I never want to think again._

Cartman may have eased up on his teasing over the last few years, but he was still an intolerant asshole. He still ripped on just about everyone he disagreed with or disliked. Actually, his increasingly taciturn nature regarding Kyle made him feel nothing but suspicion.

Still, if it was a choice between facing Stan or Cartman, right then he would have willingly chosen the latter. Ridiculously enough, this line of thoughts made him feel very guilty – as if he was in the wrong for not wanting to be hurt any more than he already had been.

In the end, he was getting wound up and feeling stupidly conflicted over the smallest of choices. It really wasn't that big a deal – even if, to sleep deprived mind, it felt that way.

Once he'd set his chair down a reasonable distance from the fat ass', he dropped his copy of Lord of the Flies down on the table and then sank down into his chair. As he was doing so, his eyes rose of their own accord and locked with a dark brown pair which were watching him intently.

Kyle didn't like the way Cartman's eyebrow arched, or the way his lips slanted into a sly smirk. "What?" he asked, weary features hardening with suspicion and an overwhelming sense of ill ease. He had the feeling that whatever the brunet was thinking was not good.

Cartman's smirk widened out into a Cheshire cat grin – dangerous, calculating and worryingly smug. "Nothing, really." he said airily, pretend to pick up his book and flip through to the right word. He didn't look up at all when he continued. "It's just... Do you seriously not realise how obvious you're being?"

Kyle's tiredly whirring thoughts ground to a very sudden halt, like all the cogs and gears working overtime had suddenly just jammed. A terrible sense of dread started seeping down into his bones. "I... I don't know what you're talking about."

His eyes glanced up from the book and glinted maliciously. "The way you're going about this whole thing, it's only a matter of time before people start _noticing_, you know."

Kyle bristled reflexively, trying and failing to hide his rising panic. The color drained from his face at an alarming rate. He opened his mouth to reply, but at that moment the other two members joined them, pulling in their chairs.

Kyle couldn't drag his horrified gaze off of Cartman's face. How—

How the fuck had the fatass noticed?

His thoughts were interrupted by Stan's mildly concerned voice. "Kyle, you okay dude?" The only thing he could do was give a small nod in reply. Apparently, that was enough for his best friend to make an assumption about the situation. "Cartman, what the fuck did you say to him?"

Had it been at any other time, Kyle might have been offended by the way Stan was victimising him. As it was though, he was far too caught up in his own increasing sense of dread. _What was that saying about never showing predators fear?_

Cartman looked like the cat that got the cream. His eyebrows climbed on his forehead and his smile turned to one of fake innocence. "Why, whatever do you mean Stan?"

Kyle could see Stan pinching the bridge of his nose, out the corner of his eye. "Dude, just leave him alone – he's been really ill recently."

The brunet snorted quietly, eyes returning to the book in his hands. "Ill? Is that what they call it these days?" he muttered under his breath, just loud enough for Kyle to hear.

A flash of something hot, furious and _alive_ burst to life in his mind for a brief second at those mocking words, before falling back into the shadows of his dread and sadness.

Wendy took the brief lapse in conversation as an opportunity to pipe up in her irritatingly prissy voice, "Well, let's get back on track." She cleared her throat lightly. "I think that we should start off with a recap of what happened in the last chapter."

Kyle finally managed to peel his tired green eyes from the fatass, opening his own book up to the right page.

Although he didn't look up even just one more time, he felt Cartman's gaze roll over him over the course of the lesson

...

"What lessons have you guys got now?" Stan asked, having apparently forgotten about the earlier tension.

"Publishing and Journalism with Miss Stephenson," Wendy sighed.

"German with that dickwad, Neumann. He's reduced a perfectly awesome language to nothing more than hippie propaganda," Cartman grumbled bitterly.

Kyle had the same lesson, and actually thought the fact Neumann included political and environmental debates in his subject made it far more interesting. Not like he was in the mood for it right then.

Stan just shrugged. "Well, at least you don't have Athletics with Turner. The guy's a slave driver."

Cartman stretched, yawned loudly and, all of his stuff shoved under one arm, turned to leave. "Well, although your bitching is really interesting, I've got better things to do." He was about halfway across the room when he called over his shoulder, "You coming, Jewboy?"

Kyle jolted at the invitation, knowing nothing good could possibly come of it. Unfortunately, it seemed that his body was on auto-drive, scooping up his notes and, (pointedly ignoring the incredulous look shot his way by both Stan and Wendy), silently tagged along after Cartman.

He supposed it was the best chance he'd get to find out what, exactly, the brunet was plotting.

Unfortunately, once they were out in the crowded corridor, there was little real opportunity to speak. Cartman definitely didn't seem bothered by this and instead just continued on, carelessly ploughing through the crowd, displaying very little concern for the individuals he shoved aside. Kyle followed behind, too lost in yet another internal debate to even consider reprimanding the larger boy for his actions.

Actually, Kyle was completely oblivious to the world around him until Cartman turned suddenly towards one of the fire exits, pushing it open and stepping out into the cool summer sunlight. Kyle hesitated to follow, staring disbelievingly at the large hand holding the door for him.

"You gonna stand there and gawk all day, faggot? Or are you gonna ditch with me?"

The slighter boy jolted at the nasty name – the same angry flame flickering to life quietly in the back of his head – and then, finally coming to a decision, strode out of the doorway, past an intently watching Cartman, and onto the fire escape steps.

The heavy door shut with a click of finality, blocking out the muffled noise of the hallway beyond and casting them into dizzying silence.

Cartman dropped his books and class notes carelessly to the floor, leant back against the wall of the school building and watched Kyle expectantly.

Kyle, feeling as if he'd just made a huge mistake – though the thinly veiled threat from earlier really suggested he didn't have much of a choice either way – just gulped back his nerves and met those malevolent brown eyes.

He plucked up whatever courage he had left, squared his shoulders and said, "What is it you want, fatass?"

Cartman's face broke into a wicked grin.

...

_**A/N: **I hope that this chapter was okay... I'm really nervous that Cartman seems OOC... I mean, Kyle's acting pretty OOC at the moment, but that'll change as the story progresses._

_I'd love it if you could give me some feedback on the interactions in this chapter-_

_-Aquaphobe_


	4. Chapter Three

_**A/N: **__I'm sorry that this chapter took so much longer to get out than the previous ones – I was absorbed in not only trying to get the interactions perfect between characters, but also with finishing school forever. Whoo!_

_Those of you who__**favourited**__,__**followed**__and__**reviewed **__(__**TamiLove**__, __**N**__, __**thecrazierone**__, __**babe**__ and __**hanareta**__)__, thank you so much! My friends must think there's something wrong with me, the amount of times they've caught me giggling and 'aww'ing at the laptop._

_In reply to__**my anonymous reviewers**__:  
__**babe**__, thanks for the continued support, I'm so happy that my writing hasn't scared you off yet. To answer your question, all I can say is that I can't actually answer it. Possible spoilers, and all that. ;3  
__**N**__, I'm flattered you took the time to read and review JotH – it means an awful lot to me. However, I don't think that this story is going in quite the direction you're hoping it will. It is still a T rating at the moment, after all. I hope this doesn't put you off from reading more!_

_**Disclaimer:** Regretfully (on my part, at least) I still don't own anything belonging or relating to South Park. Apart from this little bit of fanfic, of course._

_**Junk of the Hearts**_

Chapter Three: Little Beast

_He plucked up whatever courage he had left, squared his shoulders and said, "What is it you want, fatass?"_

_Cartman's face broke into a wicked grin._

"Kyle, Kyle, Kyle," he shook his head slowly; mockingly. As if he was disappointed by the simplicity of Kyle's question. "You've unwittingly handed me a golden opportunity."

It was really a shame that he'd forgotten just how much of a bastard Cartman could be. He was manipulative when he wanted to be.

Still though, surely there was some reason for the brunet's sudden shift in attitude, from apparent disinterest to actively involving himself. If there was one thing that Kyle would never forget about Cartman (aside his cruelness and many prejudices, of course) it was that he was a surprisingly logical thinker. Even when he'd done terrible, unforgivable things in the past that seemed completely blown out of proportion – the whole, awful ordeal with Scott Tenorman came to mind – there was always a starting point.

Had Kyle said anything particularly provocative recently?

The honest answer was no, though that could well be because Kyle had had eyes and ears only for Stan for God knew how long now. He could have easily let a scathing comment fly without ever noticing.

He clenched his hands hard around the edges of his books and notes, gritting his teeth against the confusion and bitter resentment.

When he just continued to glare at the other boy from beneath his bangs, Cartman sighed.

"Do you remember much of junior high Kyle?"

The slighter boy gave him a flat look that clearly said, _well, duh. What do you think I am? Retarded?_

"I _mean_, more specifically, do you remember Patty Nelson?" There was something dark lurking in the fatass' nonchalant voice.

Once again, Kyle was dumbfounded. Dumbfounded, but feeling that this conversation – already headed in a bad direction – was very quickly spinning out of control. "The black haired chick, you mean?" he asked quietly.

"Yes, Kyle. That one." Cartman's brows drew together, the cant of his head to the side casting a very subtle shadow across his dark eyes.

"What about her?" Kyle said bluntly, uncomfortable enough to press the conversation on.

"Think."

Kyle's face pulled back into a grimace of distaste at the order, but his weary, overworked brain once again complied.

He cast his thoughts back to the fairly quiet girl. She'd been in the other class, and had never actively involved herself with any of their group, until...

Kyle blinked. She'd never gotten involved with their group, until she'd started showing an interest in him.

The black haired girl had never come right out and said it, but then she'd never _had_ to. She'd always stared during lunch, she'd blushed like crazy when they walked by one another in the hallways and that one time when Kyle and Patty had been put together in detention, (he'd had no idea what she was in for, but _he_ was probably in thanks to the fatass), she'd just flushed red and stolen glances at him the whole time.

Awkward was one way to describe it.

He'd felt guiltily happy when she'd moved away about six months later.

His eyebrows furrowed as he stared down at the concrete of the step. What the hell did that have to do with anything?

"What am I supposed to be remembering here, fatass?" he said tiredly. He really wasn't in the mood to deal with mind games. Actually, he was really out of practice, when it came down to it. He'd spent too long indulging himself with Stan: drowning himself in love, lies, hopelessness and self pity.

Cartman's voice was stony. "There aren't many things in this world that I want, which I won't take by whatever means necessary. The few things I want that I leave alone, I do for my own reasons. I entertain that they'll eventually come to my side by themselves. The second that Patty Nelson started liking _you_, Jewboy, my chances were lost."

Kyle's eyes went wide. _Oh_, he thought. _That makes sense_. "Hold on a second," Kyle said, untangling one of his arms from his books so that he could hold it palm up towards the brunet. "Let me work this out. So... so _you_ secretly liked the Patty girl, but when she started liking _me_, you what? You realised you weren't her type? That she was too good for you?" He didn't care that he was starting to actively provoke the larger boy – it wasn't exactly as if he had much to lose in this situation. He felt irritation itching just below the surface. "Or was it that _you_ thought the second she'd started liking _me_, she was contaminated, or something?"

Cartman straightened up from the wall, body visibly tensed up. He waved one of his hands in the air, as if dispersing the accusations. The action was at odds with his body language. "That's neither here nor there. In the end, all that needs to be said is that you took something from me. You took something I'd wanted for years, and you shat all over the possibility of me ever getting it."

The itch beneath his skin was starting to grow. "So you've held this failed crush of yours against me for, like, the last _three years_? What the fuck were you waiting for?" He knew Cartman liked to wait for the right opportunity to pull one over on those he hated, but seriously? Three fucking years wasted, over one girl? Who did that?

Kyle froze.

His breath caught sharply in his throat and he stared unseeingly over the brunet's broad shoulder.

_Kyle_ did that. Kyle agonised over Stan for years on end. He'd been so completely absorbed in his super best friend all these years, that no matter what shit Cartman pulled, it wouldn't matter to him. He'd probably just shrug it off and go back to not caring about anything but Stan.

Of course, there was only so long that Kyle could carry on in his make-believe world before reality struck. That was how one sided love worked, unfortunately.

To someone like Cartman, who was surprisingly observant, Kyle's attachment to Stan would be a perfect opportunity. He'd waited patiently until Kyle was disillusioned and hurt, and then he'd strike.

He'd probably figured that Kyle would fall to pieces when Stan rejected him.

Kyle hated to say that the fatass was right.

His eyes stung with a mixture of self loathing, despair and anger. Anger at Cartman, for catching him out.

"You were waiting until he did _this_, weren't you?" he voice was quiet and a little choked.

A rich, low chuckled pulled him out of his little epiphany. Glassy green eyes met cruel dark brown. "So, you've finally figured it out. Took you a little longer than I would have liked, but what can I expect from a weak, faggy little Jew."

Kyle forced back the tears as though his life depended on it. He wouldn't break down in front of Cartman. That was exactly what the asshole wanted.

Instead, he gritted his teeth and glared with all of the resentment and anger he could. It wasn't really that difficult, when the brunet was insulting him. "Don't belittle my people, fat ass."

"What, you mean the queers, or the Jews? Does it _bother_ you to be called out on your pathetic little crush, _Jew_?"

There was really no pretending, after those comments. The flame of anger, frustration and hatred flashed to life in his chest. Except this time, he recognised it.

It was the same feeling he'd carried with him throughout childhood. The feeling of absolute loathing he'd had for Cartman.

It wasn't a nice feeling, hating someone so completely, but it filled his head and burnt away the pain of his loneliness.

It was also extremely hard to reign in. "Just tell me what the hell it is you want, you fat fuck."

Cartman's face turned stony, and he took an imposing step towards Kyle. It was only then that Kyle realised how much bigger Cartman was than him. And it wasn't all fat now, either. Cartman was heavily built – he always would be – but now there was muscle and a naturally broad bone structure. There was hard, strong muscle and half an inch of height over Kyle.

Where Kyle was lithe, lanky and just above average height, the brunet was intimidating and overpowering, in both looks and attitude. Big boned, indeed.

That had never stopped Kyle in the past, though.

He didn't back down or hesitate when Cartman stepped closer.

The malicious sneer that lit up Cartman's face reminded Kyle of a snarling dog. "I want to see you break, Kyle. I want to see you _suffer_. I always have."

The flames flickered, rising and waning with a slowly dawning realisation.

"I'll fucking tear you apart piece by piece, until you're not recognisable to even your beloved Stan," Cartman's voice was a low timbre, full of danger and promises of pain.

A cold chill skated down his spine. But Cartman was leaning in until their faces were only a foot apart, and the sadistic intent in those eyes was unbearable.

"And the best part, Jewboy?" warm breath washed over his skin and Kyle had to resist flinching away. "If you try to tell anyone, all I have to do is reveal your dark, dirty little secret."

Kyle couldn't stop the shiver of horror that coursed through him.

It was quickly followed but a rush of adrenaline so overpowering that what happened next was a blur.

He pulled back his free hand, balled it into a fist, ground out, "The fact I can't tell anyone doesn't mean I won't fight back, porky," and slammed it, _hard_ into the brunet's nose. A satisfying _crack_ followed.

Cartman reeled back, hands flying to his bloody nose as he swore up a storm.

Kyle didn't stick around to see what happened next. Books still clutched to his chest, he ducked around the still immobile brunet, and back into the corridor.

As he ran through the now empty corridor, he shook his aching hand, and lamented over the fact he'd hurt himself in the process of punching the fuckers nose in.

He didn't realise that, for even just a moment, his thoughts had been pulled away from Stan.

...

Conveniently enough, Cartman disappeared from the school grounds for the rest of the day. Bradley Biggle reported seeing him at the nurse's office, holding a profusely bloody nose and muttering darkly about murdering someone, after which several rumours sparked to life.

Bebe Stevens proposed that Cartman had been put in his place by a scorned lover. Clyde had suggested that Cartman had upset a first year over lunch money, and then got what was coming to him. Kenny'd joked about someone finding Eric checking out their girlfriend – no one bothered mentioning that this sort of thing only ever happened to Kenny himself.

Stan had said nothing over the matter at all, but had just watched Kyle with scrutinising blue eyes. He obviously recalled Kyle leaving with Cartman from English earlier that day, and had heard that Kyle had turned up to second lesson late and alone. The auburn haired boy had steadfastly refused to so much as _look_ in his best friends direction.

The rest of the day passed relatively quickly and with very little incident, considering that Kyle's thoughts and feelings were back to running at about eighty miles per hour.

World History, Law, Religious Studies and Biology whirred by in a blur. Try as he might to focus, it was almost impossible.

At the end of the day, when he was sorting through his locker and only thinking about _bed_ and _sleep_, the last person he wanted to talk to appeared behind him.

"Kyle, dude, wanna come to my place?"

Kyle nearly jumped out of his skin. "Jesus, Stan, you almost gave me a heart attack!" he gasped, spinning around and clutching his chest. He was surprisingly on edge after his earlier encounter with Cartman.

Stan scratched the back of his head and laughed weakly. "Sorry, dude. I thought you knew I was there."

Kyle sighed and turned back to his locker, retrieving his lunchbox, bag and books. He recognised the sinking feeling settling down heavily in his stomach, taking root once again. In all honesty, he hadn't even realised that it had left him for a while there. The seventeen year old took a steadying breath, shoved the rest of his stuff in his rucksack, and turned back to Stan. He already felt bad for what he was about to say. "Look, Stan, I'm still not feeling great. I just want to go home and sleep."

The dark haired boy's face fell a little. "Oh. Well, that's cool, I guess. Want a lift to yours, instead?"

Kyle averted his eyes and stared down at where his hand rested on the strap of his bag. "Nah, it's alright. I kinda want to get some fresh air first."

Kyle refused to look up at Stan as he said this – he didn't want to see his expression – but his best friend's next words sounded dejected, too. "Okay, dude. I'll... I'll see you tomorrow, then?"

He tried to smile up at Stan in reply, but the action still felt wrong: weak. "Yeah, dude. See you tomorrow."

He watched Stan walk down the corridor towards his own locker and tried his hardest to close off that terrible drowning sensation. He knew it was unfair to just keep shoving Stan away, but he needed to get over the guy – how was he supposed to do that when they were constantly together?

Kyle just pulled his bag strap a little higher up on his shoulder, shut his locker and walked through the emptying hallways, out the main entrance and into the cold summer afternoon.

Teenagers hung around the front of the school and in the parking lot for up to a good half an hour after school finished, and often in the past Kyle had done the same with Stan and their other friends. Now, however, he just kept his head down and slipped by unnoticed. For this he was thankful, because he was in no state to humour anyone else. All the raw emotions of the last week were just starting to weigh him down again, and he was thankful to know that his mom was out at some kind of meeting for the afternoon. His dad, like every weekday, wouldn't be back until just before dinner. His brother would probably go hang out at his best friend Filmore's house until around then too, so Kyle would have the house to himself.

This small incentive sped up his steps until he was pacing down the pavement towards his street. He thanked God that South Park remained a small town, because that meant the walk home was only twenty minutes long. Granted, he could have taken the bus, but at least that little comment about getting some fresh air was true. It just meant he got the added bonus of avoiding Kenny, too.

He unlocked the front door with his house keys, closed it quietly behind him and snuck up the stairs to his room.

After dinner that night – much like the previous evenings – he dismissed himself from the dinner table early, stumbled up the stairs and lay awake for hours on end, staring at the outline of his whitewashed ceiling. In all truth, although he was sort of worried about the situation with Cartman, now that he was away from the fat fuck it didn't feel all that big a deal anyway. After all, how could Cartman possibly make him feel any worse than he already did?

At this thought, he snorted a humourless chuckle to himself and rolled over onto his side.

Maybe he'd serve as a distraction, instead.

...

After another fairly sleepless night Friday was, surprisingly enough, quite a break.

Philosophy and Ethics, Physics, Social Studies and Psychology all flew by, blessedly free of Cartman. Kyle was a little suspicious as to why he wasn't in, but after about a half hour of stressing over the matter, he figured that there was no need to worry over things that hadn't even happened yet. He had plenty of things to worry over as it was.

Like Stan for example, because Stan was the easiest person for Kyle to worry about.

And worry, he did. Especially when Stan pulled him aside towards the end of lunch and said, "Look, dude, I just wanted to tell you that I'm staying over Wendy's tonight, and then when her parents get back from their trip tomorrow, we're... we're telling them that we want to get married right after graduation."

What had made the whole situation worse was the happy (if slightly nervous) smile spread right across his face. Searing pain had wrapped itself once again around Kyle's heart because he was sure their parents would graciously accept the engagement, and then this whole situation would be so much more official.

He'd done his best to slap Stan on the back and tell him good luck, but it was hard to do when he felt like he was just about ready to break down again.

Still, he'd survived everything else that had happened so far – it had hardly mattered that it was by a single thread of self control – and he convinced himself that this wasn't really anything different.

He somehow got through the rest of the school day without further incident and watched from the sidelines of the parking lot as Stan drove Wendy and himself away.

He hated the thought of what they'd be doing together tonight – her hands touching his Stan and holding him, her lips kissing him – but at least he was fairly used to that sense of jealousy by now. It wasn't exactly a new sensation.

_Still hurts, though_, he thought bitterly.

As he turned away and started walking home, he couldn't help but congratulate himself on not degenerating into a messy, sobbing wreck right there on the pavement just outside of school.

Deciding he was in need of a break from everything, Kyle ended up traipsing through town, amazing over the fact that, (in spite of it being early summer just about everywhere else in the country), South Park remained suspended in some kind of terrible, prolonged winter. They had all of about a weeks worth of snowless sunshine and warmth a year, and then it was right back to blizzards and storms. Funny, but until a transfer student in Ike's class had pointed out that Spring and Fall didn't even seem to exist, Kyle hadn't really noticed.

As the seventeen year old miserably contemplated the mystery that was South Park, he meandered about town – through random streets, past a couple of building sites (whatever was there before lost, no doubt, in some nonsensical, freak accidents) and through the centre of town. Kyle looked in through the windows at the displays without really seeing them, and didn't even bother to stop by the mall.

At some point, he'd wandered off the beaten track and down towards Stark's Pond.

It was still light outside by the time he'd reached it, and for a while he just stood off to the side and watched. There were several elementary school girls swirling around on the ice at one end of the pond, giggling and chatting as they went (seriously, was that all girls ever did when they were together? They certainly didn't seem to grow out of it). There was a taller figure at the other end of the pond, and Kyle had to squint to work out who it was.

_Huh, figures it'd be him here_, he gave a mental sigh.

Butters was definitely the type of teenage boy who'd go ice skating. And more than that, go ice skating by himself. Kyle supposed it'd be endearing, if it weren't so goddamn faggy.

For a reason that he couldn't quite put his finger on, Kyle wondered around the edge of the pond, sitting down on the snowy bank much closer to the blond. He sat in silence, not bothering to draw attention to himself, and just observed the twirls and arcs that seemed to come so naturally to the other boy. He was sure that, if he were to step back onto the ice right then, he'd fall flat on his ass (and in the least graceful way possible). It was probably a good thing that he had absolutely no desire to do so, then.

By the time that Butters looked up and spotted the figure sat on the bank, Kyle's jeans had absorbed a great deal of icy water and his bare fingers had started to go numb, despite the fading sunshine.

The blonde instantly made a beeline for Kyle, smiling and waving as he went. By the time he'd reached the edge of the pond, Kyle noted the fact that, despite his red cheeks and huffing breath, Butters must be pretty damn cold too. Though, the guy sort of deserved it, for only wearing a thin blue jumper.

"Hey there, Kyle! Whatcha doin' out here?"

Kyle shrugged. "Just went on a walk and stopped when I saw you."

"Neato! Well, you're welcome to come over here an'- an' skate with me if ya like," Butters had one of those permanently optimistic attitudes which was very sweet in theory, but more often than not just irritating. Kyle was just too down to feel anything too negative about the boy, right then.

"Nah, that's alright Butters. I probably can't skate anymore. Plus, it's sort of gay," and Jesus knew he didn't need anything to help make the truth more obvious. Mooning after his best friend was quite enough of a pointer as it was.

"Yeah, I know that." Butters didn't seem to mind being called out on how queer his actions were. "But I figure that if everyone seems convinced I'm gay anyway, a little skatin' won't hurt none."

The auburn haired teen thought this over for a moment, then supposed that it was an honest enough statement. Then something about Butters' speech hit him. "Whoa, wait, you mean you _aren't_?"

"Well heck, Kyle, course I'm not gay."

"What about when you were sent to that camp, when we were kids?"

Butters giggled a little – actually giggled. "Oh, you mean Camp New Grace? Well, my dad caught Cartman tryin' to play a prank on me, thought I was bi-curious and shipped me off there for a little while. Tu-turns out my dad's the bi-curious one, an' I'm just real girlish. It's not like I actually like guys, or nothin'."

Kyle stared blankly at him. "What about when you dressed up like Marjorine?"

Butters rolled his eyes – a movement that reminded Kyle a great deal of Kenny. "Jus' cause I don't mind dressin' as a girl doesn't mean I like dick, Kyle. I think it's got a different name, but I don't actually remember it right now."

Kyle opened and closed his mouth a few times. "Oh," was all he could say.

Before he knew what was happening, Butters had clambered off of the ice and was plonking himself down on the snow beside Kyle. "I-I mean, if ever I started _like_ likin' a guy, I'd be fine with it. 'S just that I don't like no one at all." There was a lull in conversation. "I used to like Red for a little while, but when I asked her out in junior high, she- she said I was too faggy." He laughed lightly, apparently just finding this memory amusing.

Kyle was a little lost. He didn't think he'd ever met anyone quiet as honest and open as Butters. He personally thought it was amazing Butters hadn't been beaten into a pulp for being a 'queer' when they'd reached puberty, but then he supposed that almost everyone had known one another since kindergarten, so Butters being effeminate was nothing new either. Whatever anyone said about South Park, they couldn't say they were intolerant of a person's preferences (Cartman didn't count, of course). Really, if the town was fine with Mr Garrison's multiple sex changes and very publicly announced preferences, then almost anything else – within reason – would seem acceptable.

Still didn't mean he wanted to come out, though.

He hadn't realised that he'd been completely silent until Butters nudged him gently with his shoulder. He looked up to find a pair of large blue eyes watching him with concern.

"You feelin' alright, buddy? You seem a little off."

Kyle rubbed a palm over his tired face. He was sick of telling everyone that he was fine and that nothing was wrong. Especially when one hell of a lot seemed wrong right then. "It's nothing," he said, words muffled by his hands.

"Well, sure it is," the blond declared with surprising zeal. "I'd be sad too, if my best friend wen-went off an' proposed to his girlfriend."

Kyle went entirely still, eye wide open as he stared at his fingers. When he slowly plied his hands away from his face, he took a glance at Butters.

The other boy looked as if he'd said the most innocent thing in the world.

"What...?" he asked, heart pounding madly is his chest. Shit, was he really that bad at keeping his feelings a secret? Did _everyone_ know?

"I mean, if Ken ever straightened out an' got a girl he wanted to marry, I'd be awful sad too. I'd be real worried he'd forget about me, or somethin'. But don't worry Kyle, Stan'd never forget you. You're super best friends, after all." The sweet, truthful smile on Butters face was a balm on Kyle's tattered nerves.

He released a long breath that he hadn't realised he'd been holding, and returned the smile with a small, shaky one of his own. "Thanks, Butters," he said quietly.

And it was the truth. The blond might be irritating as fuck sometimes, but he wasn't a bad kid.

"No problem, buddy. If you ever want to talk, I'm here."

After that, Butters and Kyle sat in relative peace, the blond jabbering on about his new Hello Kitty game and the benefits of blue clothing over orange (a debate that had apparently stood between him and Kenny for the last year and a half), and Kyle sat in silence, just soaking up the company.

He thought that perhaps both he and Butters had needed this sense of comradeship.

His mom called some time later, saying that dinner was on the table and asking where he was. After reassuring her that he'd been with a friend and he was about to head back home, Kyle shut off his phone and said goodbye to the blonde.

"Do you wanna walk back together?" he asked, more out of manners than out of any real desire. Now that he'd spent some time with another person without the fear of interrogation, he was feeling sort of in Butters debt.

The blond gave him a third and final shock that night, when he shook his head and said, with a knowing smile, "Gee wiz, that's a nice offer Kyle, but I don't think you really want anymore company today. Besides, I kinda want ta skate some more before it gets too dark."

Kyle might have asked just when it was that Butters had gotten so perceptive, but with one final wave, the blond was back on the ice.

He shoved the curly auburn bangs that had fallen into his eyes back under the rim of his hat and stood slowly.

He brushed the snow from his damp, icy jeans as best he could, and headed back home on numb, aching feet.

It was a little like receiving questioning from the Spanish Inquisition when he got in forty-five minutes later (no thanks to the fact that his jeans were soaked through, his skin was cold to the touch and he couldn't stop shivering), but after a luke-warm meal and a hot shower, he'd recovered and sat down in front of the television with Ike to watch the evening news.

That night passed a lot more quickly than the last few, and although for a long time he lay awake stuck between self pity and self loathing, he nodded off somewhere just before dawn.

Although five hours of sleep might have seemed paltry to him just a week or so before, he considered the short, uninterrupted rest to be a blessing right then. He didn't bother getting up or dressed until just after lunch, as his mom had dragged Ike out shopping with her.

He and his dad (with the day off from work) sat around in the living room, both really only paying half a mind to the T.V. Very little was said between them, but the general consensus was to leave one another alone to their own problems. It was a situation that worked well for both of them. Just before his mom was due back, he and his dad went separate ways – him upstairs to change and his father out the front door, probably off to visit Randy and the guys at the pub.

That afternoon, with no friends around to hang out with, Ike dragged an unwilling Kyle out into the garden to play some soccer. To say that Kyle was sporty would have been a horrendous overstatement, and his coordination skills only went as far as basketball. Though a little more adept with sport, Ike also had his own preference – hockey, while very stereotypical, was a sport he played ridiculously well. To say that the game was much of a success would be a lie.

Somehow, they whittled their way through the rest of the day, and by three o'clock the next morning, Kyle was out like a light.

Sunday passed much the same as Saturday for Kyle, though he spent most of the morning doing homework due over the next few days. Considering he'd missed Tuesday and Wednesday of the previous week, he knew that there were a few pieces that he'd missed. In hindsight, he probably should have gone and spoken to his teachers when he got back in to see if they'd set anything else, but he just hadn't been thinking clearly.

He wondered if he was getting over the whole situation even a little, but then he recalled Stan's smile as he said that he was going to ask permission to marry Wendy that weekend, and the agony that swept over him like an icy wave told him that he definitely was not.

It was times like that when he wished alcohol didn't negatively affect his diabetes. The phrase 'drown your sorrows,' had never sounded so appealing.

Instead, he ate his weight in stew at dinner and then lay in bed willing the next day never to come. The weekend had been a respite from the misery of the week, and the thought of spending the next five days stuck in close quarters with not only Stan, but Wendy and Cartman too made him feel a little on the nauseous side.

Ten hours of blissful sleep over the course of the last few days was not a habit he was falling back into, unfortunately. Instead it seemed that he was doomed to another restless night, dreading the day to come.

It was only really starting to catch up with him that yes, he had punched in Cartman's nose and that if the fatass really wanted retribution, he had some perfect blackmail material right there waiting for him to use.

Kyle wondered with no small amount of dread, as he pulled his green hat down onto his head that Monday morning, whether he'd doomed himself to being outed on his crush in front of the entire school.

He prayed to God he hadn't.

_For once, Cartman, have some goddamn decency._

...

_**A/N:**__ so, another chapter finished. I have a lot more free time now, so with any luck the next few chapters will be out a little faster._

_I know that not much happened in this chapter, but this story is determined to move at its own pace. I hope no one minds Kyle's introspection too much..._

_Have any thoughts on the chapter? Any questions or pointers? Please review – all feedback is greatly appreciated!_

_-Aquaphobe_

_29/05/13_


	5. Chapter Four

_**Disclaimer: **__Matt and Trey own all characters portrayed in this story. I own the very frazzled brain that came up with this plot. I think. Do I? I can't remember... My head hurts._

_**A/N: **__Okay, WOW. That was the longest break ever. Seriously, this whole summer holiday has been nothing but trouble. Busy, busy, busy! Oh, and I think someone stole my muse... Still, I can't apologise enough for how long this took. Sorry, guys! (__**I love you all!**__)_

_**Junk of the Hearts**_

**Last time on JotH:**

'_It was only really starting to catch up with him that yes, he had punched in Cartman's nose and that if the fatass really wanted retribution, he had some perfect blackmail material right there waiting for him to use._

_Kyle wondered with no small amount of dread, as he pulled his green hat down onto his head that Monday morning, whether he'd doomed himself to being outed on his crush in front of the entire school._

He prayed to God he hadn't._'_

Chapter Four: Lippy Kids

_I'm beginning to associate school with feeling like shit_, Kyle thought – by now growing accustomed to the heavy sense of dread that had settled on his shoulders. _Took me a little longer than it does for most kids._

The whole situation radiated with a bitter sense of irony. But then again, a great deal of things had done, recently.

He was sorting through his books for the classes he had that day, when someone rung the doorbell. There was a certain amount of bustling from the hallway below, and then the sound of the door being pulled open.

"Oh, good morning Stanley," came his mom's delighted greeting. "I haven't seen you in quite a while - I was starting to think that you two had had a fall out!"

Kyle grimaced, biting down on the inside of his cheeks to try and settle the unsteady churning of his stomach. His head was a jumbled mess because of his recent lack of sleep (the ten hours he'd gained over the weekend not really counting for much, when he hadn't slept well in around a week) and his eyes scratched with his tiredness.

Still, although the awful emotional pain hadn't lessened, the stinging impact and the shock of the news was beginning to dull down into a weary, defeated sense of acceptance. It was less like a fresh cut and more like a bruise: still there, but a lot less obvious until bashed about or poked at.

"Hi there, Mrs Broflovski." The sound of heavy boots shifting about on the door step. "I came by to give Kyle a lift into school. I haven't missed him yet, have I?"

It was an uncomfortable tug on his heart – one caught between affection and guilt – when he heard the uncertainty in Stan's voice. Kyle really hated himself for avoiding his super best friend, but knew that he'd be doing it even now were he given the opportunity.

"No, no. He's still upstairs getting ready. Let me just give him a call," there was a brief silence, and then a loud shout of, "Bubbe! Your little friend's here!"

Groaning in resignation, and scrubbing at his tired, darkly circled eyes, Kyle called back, "Coming, Ma."

It was with absolutely no enthusiasm that he gathered up the rest of his school stuff, shoved it unceremoniously into his rucksack and, flinging on his favourite orange coat, shuffled out of his room.

As he was walking down the stairs, he heard his mom jabbering on about one of her most recent meetings in a rather heated voice. The sound of Stan's 'mm's and 'ah's of politely faked interest was enough to make Kyle feel a little better.

When Stan gasped and said, "Oh, that's terrible," in a falsely concerned voice, the auburn haired boy's lips twitched up into a short smile. That was one of the things that Kyle loved about Stan - the guy always humoured his mother, even at her most opinionated. Well, to her face, at least.

Kyle grunted a hello in Stan's direction, (as was routine in these morning meetings), his mom whacked him lightly on the head for being rude as he bent down to shove on his shoes, and Stan tried to keep a straight face until they got out the front door.

As the black haired boy stepped around the car, waving goodbye to his mom, Kyle pulled open the passenger door and shuffled in, no questions asked. The car was already warm, and contrasted pleasantly with the bitingly fresh morning air. He sighed a breath of relief and sank gratefully into the seat, just praying for the short moment of peace to go on unhindered.

Stan sat quietly in the drivers seat beside him and, after closing his car door behind him, said quietly. "Kyle dude, you gonna buckle up?" For a moment, Kyle thought his friend was suing some seriously outdated way of telling him to grow a pair, but then he realised that he just meant putting on the seat belt. A little bemused by his own stupidity, he just frowned and pulled the seat belt over him, blinking at the closed door for a long moment - when the hell had he shut it?

With that, he pushed his rucksack down by his feet and stared out the front window as Stan started up the car.

For a long while, they just sat in silence. There was no music playing, and Stan never bothered with the radio - he'd once told Kyle that he thought it was just sort of a crappy invention, only good enough to serve as an alarm clock. To say that this silence was companionable would be a lie. It just sort of felt awkward.

"...I told Wendy's parents," Stan eventually piped up.

Kyle's heart wrenched, but he did his best to cover his hurt look with one of interest - he was just glad Stan's eyes were on the road ahead. "Oh yeah, you said you were going to. Dude, how'd it go?"

Was it terrible of him to wish they'd said no_? I'm a shit best friend_, he thought unhappily.

"It went great! I mean, her dad tried to give me a 'man-to-man' chat about providing for Wendy after she's my wife and all, but then Wendy heard and went apeshit crazy at him for being a chauvinist or something. It was fucking hilarious." He chuckled and shook his head a little, that dazed, loves truck look filling his eyes and making Kyle's breakfast curdle in his stomach.

He didn't need this right now.

_Act normal, Kyle_, he told himself. _Act normal_.

He laughed. It came out a little on the high pitched side, and ended up startling them both. He sounded hysterical – well, either that or manic.

Stan glanced over at him for a brief moment, and in that moment Kyle wished that he could crawl under the seat and die. There was definitely no potential as an actor for him in the future. "Ky, are you okay? You've been kinda off lately."

Turning his head away to stare resolutely out at the passing scenery, he muttered, "I haven't been sleeping much since I was ill, that's all." After a strained pause, he added, "It's not a big deal."

His best friend really didn't seem all that convinced, but for some reason held his tongue. It was only when they'd pulled up in the parking lot that he finally spoke up again.

"Kyle, has this got anything to do with Cartman? You were both acting odd last week, and then someone broke the fatass' nose."

Kyle huffed an angry breath. "It's nothing. The idiot was just spewing out a load of intolerant, bigoted hate towards the Jews, like normal."

He felt Stan's eyes on him and turned around to see a rather baffled expression on his face. "Dude, he hasn't said or done anything much related to the Jews since you two stopped fighting in junior high."

Kyle was flabbergasted, and couldn't really find any words to say. He suspected that he looked a little like a goldfish. "But- but he's an... anti-Semitist. A Nazi bastard," he eventually choked out, feeling the need to defend this point – especially after what had happened the previous Thursday. Couldn't Stan see that Cartman was just the same as he'd always been? Granted, Kyle had sort of forgotten the fact, but he'd never once entertained the idea of forgiving Cartman for any of it.

Stan got one of those looks like he was dealing with an unreasonable four year old. "Look, I don't know what's up with you recently, but please just promise me you won't provoke him? He may have changed, but I bet you he'd still relentlessly hound anyone who pissed him off."

Stan didn't bother waiting for a reply – apparently presuming that the conversation was as good as over – and hopped out the driver seat after reaching into the back and retrieving his bag. Kyle unbuckled himself at a far more sedate pace, grabbing his rucksack from beside his feet and trying to ignore how much Stan's comment had affected him. He hated it when Stan lectured him, but what made it worse was that the guy only did it out of concern. Normally it wasn't so bad, because a lot of the time what Stan said made sense.

This time, it didn't.

Oddly, this just sort of upset him.

"You have no idea what that prejudiced dickwad is capable of," he muttered under his breath. "He could ruin everything for me."

With that, he slipped out of the car and caught up with Stan, walking at his side in that same, heavy silence.

...

Homeroom passed ridiculously quickly as Mr Garrison, still pissed over something in his private life, turned up only in the last five minutes to do roll call, throw a few insults at the troublemakers in class and then stormed off out again. This meant that the whole time morning announcements were playing on the school intercom, Kyle had to listen to Kenny's morning routine (amusing for the first five minutes, before Kyle began feeling like he was listening in to some kind of one way porno). That wasn't what set his teeth grinding, though. He'd had practice when it came to ignoring Kenny's boisterous antics. No, what was really getting to him was undoubtedly the cold, hard stare he could feel boring into him from cross the room.

Cartman.

Instead of unnerving or upsetting him like it might have done for a normal person, Cartman's glare just irritated Kyle. It made him want to turn around and flip the brunet off.

It sort of made him angry. After all, the guy had no right to be pissed off at Kyle - he'd cornered him, called him out and then threatened to destroy everything he held dear. Really, did the fatass expect him to sit there and take it like a bitch? He'd had a lot of practice with this douchebag when he was younger, and one of the first things he'd learnt was not to give in to Cartman. If you gave in while hoping for mercy, you'd end up in a worse position than where you started.

Didn't stop the irritating staring, and the creepy half-smirk he received when he turned to glance over in the direction of Stan's chair, when the black haired boy laughed at something.

Still, soon enough he was out of the classroom and on his way to Chemistry.

The rest of the morning passed with relative ease, though lunch was once again a bit of an ordeal. Considering he was sat with the three people he wanted to see least, Kyle felt as though he'd done a good job at stomaching any of his lunch. It was all different kinds of horrifying, having Stan and Wendy making out on the bench beside him while Cartman, the bridge of his nose purpled with bruising, leered at him from the opposite seat. At least Butters was there, though the little guy was so caught up in retelling how he'd gotten grounded for putting the Nestlé Quick where the tomato ketchup was supposed to be (or something equally nonsensical) that it did absolutely nothing to settle his nerves.

After lunch, however – as Kyle was walking to Social Studies with the rest of the guys – Butters came up beside him and nudged his shoulder. When Kyle looked up, the happy-go-lucky blond was giving him a reassuring, if not slightly tired, smile.

He didn't bother saying anything, but then he didn't really have to. It was just sort of nice to have his feelings acknowledged – even in such a small gesture.

When the afternoon came to a close, Kyle was once again caught by Stan. He agreed to the lift home, the guilt from last week still very much hanging over him. It was only when they were in the car that he started to regret the decision.

"D'you wanna hang out for a while?" the dark haired boy asked, face hopeful.

In all honesty, Kyle was still a little peeved about Stan's earlier warning not to provoke Cartman, as well as the fact that he couldn't very well defend his own actions. On top of that, spending time with Stan still made him feel like he was falling apart.

Stan must have seen him hesitate, because immediately his face dropped.

"Or, you know, whatever. We could do it another time. It's cool."

_Great_, Kyle thought. _Now I feel like an ass._

"No dude, let's hang out. I was just thinking about an essay I need to write for Philosophy and Ethics. I can do it later," he didn't really think before the words just sort of... blurted out. It was like having verbal diarrhoea.

Still, once he'd said it, he didn't regret it at all. His best friend looked so damn happy, it hurt. "Awesome." He said, putting the car into reverse and pulling out behind a silver ford. "I was thinking we could try out this new game I got. It' fucking sweet, dude. The graphics are insane."

As they joined the queue of cars exiting the parking lot, Kyle peered longingly out the window at the students lining up for the bus, and noticed that Butters was stood in the queue alone. He wished he was out there, too.

...

It wasn't that bad, really. The game was pretty good, and the storyline was neat too.

Unfortunately though, Kyle spent the whole time hyper aware of Stan. It was the, _Oh Moses, he's sat right next to me, seriously what the fuck do I do?_ kind of hyper aware, despite the fact that yes, he had been this close (and closer) to the dark haired boy at many times over the past seventeen years of his life. And on top of that, there was the nasty little voice in the back of his head that went_, and you know what? You'll never get any closer to him than this._

Still, at least he wasn't feeling so much like someone was thrusting a rusty blade through is chest and twisting it every time he looked at his best friend.

When Randy got home from the pub and kicked them out of the front room so he could watch his evening cooking shows, Sharon came through to ask what the boys wanted for dinner. Naturally, it was just sort of expected for Kyle to stick around until a ridiculous time at night, and then inevitably decide to crash there instead of making his way home in the dark. This often meant rushing in the morning to get home and take his insulin before school, but it hadn't stopped the boys before.

All considered, it really wasn't a surprise to anyone (not even Kyle himself) when he phoned home at eleven at night to tell his mom where he was.

He and Stan had snuck back down into the living room after Sharon had declared it bedtime for herself and Randy (who'd just wanted five more minutes on his new ipad) and they'd ended up watching Terrance and Phillip: Asses of Fire. It was sort of a tradition by this point - and really not that funny now they weren't, like, nine anymore. Didn't mean it wasn't an awesome movie, though. Sort of revolutionary, as far as stuff like that went.

No wonder it had started a war.

Kyle yawned loudly and tried to blink the heaviness from his drooping eyes.

From somewhere beside him, Stan said, "Seriously, we can go upstairs if you're tired."

"Nah dude, it's fine," he murmured, eyelids already drifting shut again. Right then, he felt way too relaxed - in hindsight, he really had no idea why he'd been avoiding Stan at all.

He was sure he'd remember it in a second, but for now...

His head dropped to the side and landed on something warm and comforting.

Stan's shoulder.

For now he was happy right here, thanks.

...

In the morning the boys had to face a rather bemused, unimpressed Sharon, who hovered over their sleeping forms (legs tangled, salted popcorn strewn all over the couch and carpet where they'd knocked it, new cushions crumpled, and the Terrance and Phillip menu screen whirring away on the television) with her hands on her hips and her foot tapping impatiently.

When Kyle blinked groggily, coming out of his first proper sleep for the last week and a bit, he just gawked dumbly up at Stan's mom.

She raised an eyebrow. "Good morning, Kyle." Kyle continued to gawk, still half asleep.

From behind him, half draped over the arm of the sofa, Stan stirred, grumbling and attempting to roll onto his other side. It was only when he met the further obstruction that was Kyle – bodily sprawled on top of him – that Stan surfaced fully.

Then he looked up and saw his mom. "Oh, fuck," his muttered, suddenly struggling to sit up and look innocent.

Kyle, at this point realising where he was – and who, in particular, he was lying on – scrambled backwards across the couch like he'd been burned. His heart was hammering madly in his chest like he'd been running a marathon and the popcorn from the night before churned around in his stomach, as if deciding whether or not it wanted to revisit him.

He didn't care about how he should be pretending like he and Stan hadn't been asleep downstairs all night, because right then he was trying not to hyperventilate.

Kyle looked at Stan; Stan looked at Mrs Marsh; Mrs Marsh looked at them both.

The standoff continued until Sharon just let her hands fall from her hips and, rolling her eyes as she walked towards the kitchen, said, "Once you've cleaned up that mess, come get some breakfast."

The first few times she'd found the boys this way (around eight years or so ago) there had been a great deal of scolding done. Unfortunately for Sharon, it had happened at least once a month since then - and sometimes several times in a week, if it were a holiday.

She'd given up on them once they hit junior high.

In her own words, teenage boys were a force of nature not to be reckoned with; at least they weren't as bad as teenage girls.

Kyle and Stan sat on the couch for a while longer, Stan rubbing his neck like he had a crick in it while he took in the state of the couch and the floor nearby, and Kyle looking like he was about to bolt from the room at a hundred miles an hour.

"Dude," the darker haired boy croaked, "I think you bruised my ribs. Crap, your elbows are bony."

That seemed to break whatever spell had frozen Kyle to the spot, and he allowed himself to calm down. It wasn't like Stan was gonna suddenly start calling him gay or something - this level of contact was completely normal between them. It always had been, even if it wasn't normal for anyone else. It wasn't like he saw Clyde and Craig snuggling often, or anything.

As weird as the situation might have been for any other friends, for them it was perfectly acceptable. He just had to remind himself of that.

When Stan shifted and reached a hand down the back of his jeans (they'd not bothered changing into lighter clothing before they'd come downstairs last night – something Kyle was eternally thankful for) and pulled out a handful of squished, misshapen popcorn, Kyle couldn't help it. He snorted in amusement, laughing at the disgusted look on his best friend's face.

That stopped pretty soon, though.

"Ugh, sick dude," he yelped, holding his hands up to shield his face as Stan chucked the deformed popcorn at him.

After a short game of 'chuck-the-stale-popcorn-at-each-other', the boys actually started clearing up their mess. They eventually stumbled through the kitchen to demolish half a box of cereal between them, and then went up to Stan's room to grab their stuff.

While Stan retreated to the bathroom to shower and change, Kyle nicked one of his friends t-shirts and, ignoring how goddamn happy this made him (because, seriously, that was very weird territory that he had absolutely no desire to cross into), he retreated back downstairs.

The ride to Kyle's house was completely uneventful – except for the obvious blind rush – and after taking his shot of insulin, they hopped straight back into the car.

Stan drove them into the school parking lot with all of two minutes to spare before homeroom began.

They went their separate ways to visit their lockers, and right as the bell rang to signal the start of the school day, they both burst through the classroom door.

The sight that met them was definitely not all that odd, considering who their homeroom teacher was, but at the same time it wasn't a pleasant sight to be greeted with, first thing in the morning.

The class were sat awkwardly at the their desks as Mr Garrison, sobbing and wailing, blew his nose into a tissue, before discarding it into the small mountain range of similarly crumpled tissues beside his desk. One of the windows was shattered from the impact of what Kyle thought was most likely a chair. This was very probable, as Kenny's chair was missing and he was instead sat, cross legged, on the floor where it would have been before.

As the two boys slunk in, trying their best to be quiet, Garrison just waved a hand vaguely in their direction, saying anticlimactically, "You two, detention for being late."

Both boys dropped the pretence of sneaking in and, sparing one another a final frustrated glance, traipsed to their desks.

Despite the pout he wore, and the searing glare burning into the back of his head, Kyle felt happier than he could remember.

The feeling lasted until the moment homeroom was over.

Kyle had Law first period, and because Garrison had dismissed them as quickly as possible, the students loitered awkwardly in the hallway.

The seventeen year old had only gotten a few paces out of the classroom when his unhappiness returned, hitting him so hard in the chest that in practically winded him. He stopped only a few meters from his super best friend, but once again the darker haired boy didn't notice – it would have been more than a little difficult to do so, what with Wendy's arms wrapped so tightly around shoulders.

He'd indulged himself too much the previous day - so much that he'd almost slipped back into his blissful state of false-reality, where everything was perfect and only Stan existed. Where Stan _was_ his existence. He'd forgotten this constant ache behind his ribs, and the sour taste that slipped over his tongue.

He felt so Goddamn stupid. Why did he do this to himself? Was he really that much of a sucker for punishment?

Warm breath skated over the back of his neck and stirred his hair in an almost silent chuckle. Shivers of shock skittered down his spine at an electrifying rate, and the voice that followed after stopped him from moving a muscle.

"How does it feel, coming second to that whore? How does it feel to be used like a bitch and then cast aside for that?" The words were a low timbre, and rich with cruel amusement. Goosebumps rose on Kyle's covered forearms as if an icy breeze had blown over him, even as his insides twisted themselves into horribly painful knots.

"If you're that interested in knowing, then why don't you ask your mom? I hear she has plenty of practice," the comeback was lacklustre and caught pathetically in his throat, but Cartman's reply was a guttural growl that filled him with a brief, bitter sense of satisfaction. Even when he was wallowing in self pity, he was somehow managing not to crumble under Cartman's words.

Cartman's obvious annoyance at this was the cherry on top of the cake.

However, instead of flying into an angry, accusatory rage like he had done countless times during their childhood, the brunet somehow composed himself. Kyle didn't know how this miracle had happened, and really had no desire to, anyway. He just kept watching Stan and Wendy from the sidelines, feeling ridiculously similar to a kicked puppy. Cartman was obviously highly aware of Kyle's distraction.

"Just soak it in, Jewboy. It doesn't matter what you do - the only person Stan wants is Wendy, and she's more than willing to open her legs for him." The words settled like dead weights on Kyle's shoulders, and he was reminded again of how cruel one sided love was.

Cartman pushed past him, his larger shoulder brushing Kyle's. The hurt burst into anger the second her heard the fatass's laughter echoing back at him.

Kyle's lips curled back as he gritted his teeth.

_Fucking bastard_, he thought nastily, hating that the Nazi was getting under his skin.

Instead of hanging around everyone from lesson, he stalked off after the fatass, in the general direction of the Law class.

At least now that he'd had a decent nights sleep, he wasn't feeling quite as explosive.

_Give it another sleepless night or two, and I'll be right back to it_. Just the thought of it (as inevitable as it was) made his head hurt. Humans weren't built to survive on such small amounts of sleep.

For instance, look how Tweek had turned out – a twitchy, nervous wreck who was stick thin and almost always missing clumps of hair.

Within a week or so, Kyle would probably be just like the paranoid blond. Well, that was _if_ he actually managed to stay out of Cartman's way for that long.

...

Law was, predictably, like a living hell. Not only did Kyle absolutely loathe it to begin with (he was not going to be a lawyer, no matter what his parents were hoping for) but Cartman, also in the lesson, somehow lured the entire class into a debate about human rights. He and Wendy spent almost the entire time shrieking at one another, however – so there was the small benefit of someone distracting the fatass. Then somewhere towards the end of the lesson, Christophe stood from his seat, procured a gardening trowel and, waving it threateningly at Gregory for taking Wendy's side, began trying to beat his best friend's head in.

Most Law lessons were spent in this manner – Kyle might have joined in, in the past, but all he'd done over the last few years was zone out and end up doodling all over his notes. He tried this time, too, but he just couldn't help feeling the itch of irritation stirring just below his skin every time Cartman opened his stupid mouth. How the heck could anyone say he'd changed? He was just the same as ever.

Ms Watts, the Law teacher, finally stopped cowering behind her desk when Cartman turned and outright stated that, not only was Hitler his idol, but that he'd bring the bastard back in half a second if were given a chance (how this was relative to the debate they'd been having, Kyle had no idea). In that moment, he'd pretty much started all out class warfare. The only way that the young, mild mannered law teacher could deal with it was to give him a detention and to send him to the principal's office. Kyle didn't trust the way that Cartman just threw his hands up in the air and went out willingly.

Physics was next and was thankfully free of any of his friends, though he did get paired up with Kevin Stoley and a surprisingly smart ex-raisins girl named Lexus. Working with the both of them was a very... interesting experience, if not slightly surreal – one of the nerdiest guys in school and one of the most popular girls.

Cartman, Christophe, Damien, Tweek and Kenny had all been banned from the science labs in their first year of high school when they were all, for one reason or another, deemed too dangerous to have around the lab equipment. From what Kyle could gather, the former three had all either purposely sabotaged experiments or stolen supplies, while Kenny and Tweek were terribly, horribly accident prone. They were allowed to continue studying the subjects, but they had to do it on a strictly 'no practical work' basis.

At South Park High, although the sciences were mandatory (meaning everyone had to study them until senior year), there was also the option of doing additional lessons in either Biology, Chemistry or Physics, for those that were particularly talented – Kyle's Monday Chemistry was one such lesson. He also did additional Math.

The Physics lesson he was currently sat in was not, however. It was just run-of-the-mill physics. It was probably a good thing too, because physics hurt his head. He couldn't imagine doing extra lessons on the subject.

While the awkward trio were trying to get their heads around a particularly confusing equation, Doctor Wiseman – some English dude with a perfectly twirled moustache and a stick shoved up his ass – had caught Clyde Donovan asleep at his desk. As punishment, he'd been forced to leave his group with Craig and Token, and instead switched places with a suddenly very smiley looking Lexus.

The way that Clyde and Kevin eyed each other warily – the jock and the geek – said that they weren't at all sure of one another.

the rest of the lessons until lunch crawled by at a disturbingly fast pace, so that when the bell signalling break rang, Kyle felt as though only minutes had gone by. It must have been the reluctance and the dread that had done it. He scuffed his feet all the way to the cafeteria, and slumped down onto the seat beside Butters. This did unfortunately mean that Stan and Wendy were sat opposite him, but at least they weren't making out right then. That, and Cartman wasn't there.

"Where's the fatass?" he asked, interrupting the conversation at the table.

Wendy huffed a breath and crossed her arms over her chest. "With any luck, he's still being grilled by the headmistress."

"Why? What'd he do?" Stan piped up, for some reason shooting a worried glance over in Kyle's direction.

The black haired girl paused here, an unpolished nail coming up to thoughtfully tap against her chin. "Actually, it was sort of odd. Like he was purposely trying to provoke everyone."

"We-well doesn't he do that anyway?" Butters asked, looking up from his crustless ham sandwich for the first time since Kyle had sat down. Kyle only then noticed how washed out the shy little blond looked.

Wendy's brow furrowed over her large, dark blue eyes thoughtfully, and Kyle envied her just that little more for her natural good looks. Stupid girlish eyelashes. "No, not to that extent. Normally he's just overly obnoxious, but today he was really trying to cause trouble. He was horrible, wasn't he Kyle?"

The auburn haired boy was startled from his jealous inner tirade the second Wendy said his name. "Oh, uh, yeah. I guess," he muttered, not wanting to get dragged into the conversation.

Wendy sighed again, plonking her elbow on the table, and supporting her chin in her palm. "It's a shame, really. I was starting to think that maybe he'd grown up a little."

"Maybe he just ain't feeling too good," Butters shrugged. His voice sounded flat.

The quiet statement and the following lull in conversation was apparently the cue for Wendy to turn her attention Stan, leaving Kyle and Butters in silence. They both picked at their food listlessly for a while, Butters taking the occasional nibble of his sandwich or sip of his pineapple juice, and Kyle smushing his pasta underneath the tines of his fork.

Out of no where, a thought occurred to Kyle.

"Hey Butters, are you and Kenny still fighting?"

Butters' shoulders visibly tensed up for a moment, right before they slumped. "...Yeah," he replied, voice dull.

"I was wondering what'd happened," Kyle realised that they both sounded as lifeless as one another.

It was only because he was observing Butters so closely that he saw the blond's ears turn a dark pink. "Nothin', really. Just... y'know, friend stuff. He wanted to do somethin', an' I didn't."

Kyle blinked. Wow, that wasn't informative at all.

He scratched the back of his head, just underneath his ushanka, and tried his best not to push the subject. It didn't matter how much he might have wanted to know, because he just wasn't going to make the poor guy talk about something he clearly didn't want to. Still, it left him feeling a tad bit out of sync with the rest of the world – why was he suddenly seeing so eye-to-eye with the awkward blond? He'd never really spared Butters any of his time in the past, and for that he was sort of feeling guilty. It didn't matter how annoying the kid was at times, it wasn't his fault. Everyone knew that Butters had had a far from ideal upbringing, with his often overly strict, coddling parents. There was also the fact that he'd been bullied quite a bit in elementary school, and had been very much outcast until he joined their friendship group.

"D'you know where he is?"

Butters just shook his head and took a bite out of his sandwich.

The way that the blond ducked his head and purposely avoided his gaze made Kyle's chest tighten, and he couldn't help feeling a little peeved at Kenny. Why'd he just suddenly up and abandon Butters like that - especially when he knew that the blond had no one else to talk to? At least while Kyle was avoiding Stan, the guy had Wendy and the rest of his vast friendship group.

Seriously, purposely ignoring Butters was paramount to neglecting a puppy in Kyle's mind: excuseless. Kyle didn't know why Kenny had suddenly started avoiding Butters, but whatever that reason was, it had better be a good one. It was sort of creepy, seeing the usually optimistic blond acting so deflated and despondent.

It was sort of like seeing a reflection of himself.

...

Last lesson on Tuesday was phys. ed., much to Kyle's lacking enthusiasm. Unlike a lot of the boys, Kyle had somewhat grown out of sports, the older he'd gotten. He didn't mind athletics too much and of course basketball was still great, but football was simply terrible.

Really, really terrible.

So terrible that more than once, he'd skipped P.E altogether – his mother's wrath be damned.

His excuse for being so goddamn terrible at it was that he was a scrawny, diabetic Jew. Really, he figured it was because he was just plain pathetic. It would explain why the only other people to normally get sat on the bench along with him were Tweek, Thomas, Butters and Kenny.

And so it was that Kyle trailed into the locker rooms with about as much enthusiasm as a freshly swatted fly.

As was by now habit when changing for P.E class, Kyle made sure that he wasn't stood right next to Stan, because although he'd seen his friend naked many times in the past, it certainly wouldn't stop him from staring. Stan had done a great deal of soccer and baseball over the last four years or so, and it showed.

Just thinking about this made Kyle's face heat up.

He was so flustered that he turned his back to Stan completely, dumping his gym kit onto the first bench he saw.

Trying to distract himself from the images flying through his mind and causing butterflies to do dangerous loops, dives and spirals in his stomach, Kyle yanked his hat off of his head and dropped it onto the bench before reaching a hand up and beginning to unzip his jacket.

That was when he felt it – that same angry, analysing glare.

He turned slowly, eyes rising to the cause of his sudden discomfort.

Cartman was sat beside him, topless and staring incredulously at his torso. Baffled and more than a little unnerved, Kyle looked down at himself self consciously.

His eyes widened.

_Oh crap, I'd forgotten I was wearing that._

Stan's t-shirt. And it was clearly Stan's for two reasons: it was dark blue with a red sports logo emblazoned on the front (Stan's two favourite colors, and two that Kyle normally never wore), and it was clearly too big for him – Stan's shoulders and arms were wider, and his chest a little broader than the redhead's. The neck line fell too low, and had the unintentional effect of drawing attention to Kyle's far slighter, paler frame.

_Oh_.

When he looked back up, the incredulous stare had shifted to one of smug amusement, though those dark eyes glittered with something cold and hard. His stomach dropped, and all the little butterflies that had taken up residence there until then shrivelled and died.

"Wow, Jewboy," the words were infused with surprise – whether it was genuine or false, Kyle couldn't tell. "When I said those things earlier, I didn't expect them to be so literal."

"Shut up, Cartman," Kyle said, cheeks once again heating up. He glanced around to make sure that no one was listening to their conversation.

"No, please, I want to know," his tone was vindictive, and it showed in his eyes now. "Will you service anyone, or is it just Stan in particular?"

"There's nothing going on, and you know it." Kyle muttered in a hushed, hurried tone.

"Oh, but you want there to be, don't you," the mocking purr of Cartman's voice infuriated him.

"I'm warning you, fatass," Kyle growled, voice getting louder to try and cover Cartman's malicious words.

The taller boy levelled Kyle with a flat look. "And I'm quaking in my boots, faggot. Really, I'm terrified." The brunet looked Kyle up and down in an assessing manner. "Just the thought of you attacking me with your purse makes my pulse race."

The brunet wasn't even bothering to keep his tone down anymore, and Kyle was growing desperate. Casting a wary glance around the room, he realised that the confrontation was starting to gather more attention.

_Shit! Think fast, Kyle, think fast,_ he told himself, eyes darting across the room for any sign of escape.

Then, they alighted back on Cartman.

Again feeling cornered, Kyle gritted his teeth and ducked his head, muttering just loud enough for the bastard smirking beside him to hear, "Don't you dare push me, you fucker. Or I swear to God, I will make your life miserable."

Cartman bent to retrieve his gym top from the bench, a deep, low chuckle escaping his lips. This close, only Kyle could hear it over the chatter. "Now _this _is a game I like," Cartman growled, his lips barely moving. Against his better judgement, Kyle's eyes flickered over to Cartman's, whose face was less than two feet away. "You're on, Jewboy."

Cartman pulled away, the smirk tugging his lips briefly hidden from view as he pulled his t-shirt over his head. When he was done, he grabbed his stuff and walked away, leaving Kyle feeling desperately worried.

The brunet didn't look back at Kyle until he'd tucked his clothing and kit bag away in a locker, pulled his trainers onto his feet, and walked calmly to the door.

The grin still hadn't left his face, and a cold shiver worked its way down Kyle's spine.

...

Kyle wasn't sure how he survived the rest of the day, but by final bell he was a frustrated, furious mess of nerves. God, Cartman was a tosser. He hadn't spoken to the guy again, and yet he was about ready to pull out his hair.

He was convinced that the brunet was planning something. He _recognised_ that glint in his eyes, now that he thought about it.

It was like Scott Tenorman all over again.

When Stan offered to give him a lift home, Kyle had just absently shaken his head and mumbled about having some stuff to do.

He queued up for the bus, lost in thoughts, and only resurfaced briefly to notice the equally distracted blond sat next to him. Butters still looked exactly the same as before, and was sending worried glances towards the entrance, like he was looking for someone.

It didn't take a genius to work out who he was looking for. And it didn't take more than one sweeping look to know that Kenny wasn't there.

It was sort of a novel experience, feeling concern bubble up in his chest, and for once not feeling it for Stan or himself.

If anyone were to have asked him, he would have claimed that he'd only bumped shoulders with Butters accidentally – you know, when he leant down to put his bag on the floor by his feet.

He would never have admitted to the small, reassuring smile he'd offered, when green eyes met blue.

...

The evening passed by in a blur – his brief break from his hatred for Cartman when he'd been on the bus home was completely forgotten the second he stepped down onto the sidewalk.

He barely recalled what he'd had for dinner and instead of watching T.V with Ike, he trudged up the stairs to do some class work and exam prep – he'd almost forgotten that finals were coming up soon.

Despite the anger simmering and stewing in the back of his mind all evening, his nervousness seemed to have sharpened his wits and kept him intensely focussed on his schoolwork. By nine at night, not only had he ploughed through all of his assignments, but he'd also finished his essay and had caught up with revision.

Before he turned in for the night, he took a well deserved bath and was surprised when he found his eyes drooping shut.

As he pulled on fresh boxers and clambered beneath the covers, still grumbling and glowering about the fatass, he wondered bemusedly whether he'd actually sleep that night.

Despite all the shit he'd gone through over the course of the day, he supposed that – in a twisted way – he had Cartman to thank for distracting him from his previous upset.

Only a moment after his head hit the pillow, he fell into a mercifully dreamless sleep.

...

"Y'know, you don't have ta worry about me," Butters mumbled awkwardly, refusing to meet his eyes. His skin was as pale as ever and there were dark smudges under his eyes in the reflection on the bus windows.

Kyle, who'd woken in a fowl but perfectly clear-headed mood, snorted and folded his arms over his chest. "Who said I was worried?" he grumped.

This only earned him a sigh. Apparently, Butters chose to ignore the snarky comment. "It's happened before an' it'll happen again. I-it's not Ken's fault I'm a bad friend."

That wasn't the right thing to say to Kyle just then – Butters seemed to find it hard to state his own opinions most of the time, so it was a big thing for him to stop being a pussy for long enough to tell Kenny where to shove it. The injustice of the whole situation was infuriating – even if it really did have nothing to do with him. He and Butters weren't good friends (were they friends at all?), and Kyle was really just using this as an opportunity to vent all his excess annoyance. Still, anything was fair game until he got the chance to wring Cartman's fat neck. "Oh for fuck sake, Butters, pull your head out of your ass for a second, would you? As far as I can tell, Kenny's acting like a total prick and you have every right to be pissed at him. Man up, for once!"

The blond had tensed up for a long moment, and when he turned around with big, sad blue eyes, Kyle wondered if his venting had been worth the inevitable tears. Butter's looked like he was gonna start sobbing at any moment.

All he said though, was, "I thought you said you weren't worried."

Wait, was that a smile tweaking at his lips? Kyle's scowl deepened and he grumbled under his breath in reply. This time, _he_ was the first to look away.

Seriously though, Butters was such a girl.

...

Mr Garrison was apparently (for now at least) back to his usual dry, scornful self that morning. After morning announcements, he took great pleasure in reading out a woefully long list of those in homeroom who had detention, making disparaging comments as he went.

"Kenny, detention after school on Thursday for sexual assault. Craig, the exact same goes for you." (Tweek emphatically shrieked, "_Oh Jesus!"_) "Clyde, detention tomorrow too, for being a lazy bastard and sleeping during lessons." There was a pause as he flipped over a sheet of paper, and continued. What he said made Kyle's still irate thoughts grind to a sudden halt. "Stan, Kyle, detention Friday for being late. Again. Oh and Eric, you've got detention then too, because you're a dick."

Detention with both Stan _and_ Cartman?

_Fuck._

...

Nothing much else happened throughout the course of the day, though every time Kyle caught sight of Cartman, the larger boy seemed unbearably smug, and didn't hesitate to fire gleeful smirks in Kyle's direction at every opportunity. Stan and Wendy were as tied up in one another as usual, and Butters remained listless and dull throughout lunch period. Kenny still had yet to make an official appearance, though Kyle _did_ catch him glaring coldly at the other blond, before stalking away down a different corridor. Butters, who'd caught the look, was clearly crestfallen.

Thanks to all the extra work he'd put in the previous night, the redhead hadn't had to worry about falling behind in classes because of his lack off concentration. He was so busy flitting from unmitigated fury every time Cartman walked by and muttered "Fag," to an unhealthy amount of worry about what would happen during Friday's detention, that he barely heard a single word any of his teachers said.

That night, he had a terrifying dream of all the ways Cartman might humiliate him (for some reason, many of these dreams contained mentions of bananas, monsters, cupids and tourettes), followed by an hour of sleeplessness in which he imagined all the ways he could kill the brunet.

He escaped out the door on Thursday morning – once again without running into Stan – and wasn't at all surprised when he was joined on the bus by Butters. He was far too wrapped up in his own upcoming doom to comment on the blonde's puffy red eyes or pink nose, and pretended not to notice when their shoulders settled against each other.

Neither said a word the entire trip, and by the time they got off, Butters eyes weren't quite so swollen, and Kyle was feeling a little more level headed.

Like Wednesday, Thursday seemed to pass before he could so much as blink, though he wasn't quite sure how he'd managed to go the entire day without knocking some of Cartman's teeth out. The other boy knew exactly how antsy Kyle was (despite his best efforts to try and hide the fact) and was playing on it to drive Kyle up the wall.

Really, it was a surprise that he didn't end up developing a permanent twitch by the end of the day.

Kyle slept fitfully that night, completely dreading the next day. He was no closer to knowing how to deal with the problem, and all he wanted to do was skip school and pretend that nothing was wrong.

However sweetly tempting denial was though, Friday morning dawned fresh and sunny far sooner than he would have liked.

During breakfast, Stan showed up. Kyle was in no mood for conversation of any kind and Stan, picking up on this pretty quickly, seemed fresh out of ideas on how to cheer his super best friend up. The dark haired boy had never really been one for small talk, and only ever had much to say when he was talking about sports or Wendy – neither of which interested Kyle on the best of days.

It was only at lunch that Kyle was pulled out of his ever increasing sense of panic.

As he approached his usual table, he realised that the only people there were, oddly enough, Kenny and the fatass. There was no sign of the other three.

Kyle, doing his best to ignore the cruel grin that instantly lit up Cartman's face, slid onto the bench beside Kenny. Through his own fog of frustration, Kyle managed to notice Kenny was glowering angrily down at his lunch: what looked to be a rather pathetic baloney sandwich and a half eaten poptart.

Feeling strangely irate with the blond's mood – he had absolutely _no right_ to act like he was having a bad time, when he'd been such an ass recently – Kyle grouched, "What the hell crawled up _your_ ass and died there?"

Kenny shot him a briefly startled look (he clearly hadn't expected to be on the receiving end of Kyle's newfound hostility). "What?"

"Oh, come off it Kenny. You've been a complete prick all week. Where's Butters, anyway? Did you scare him off or something?"

The way that Kenny flinched at the acid barbed words was completely lost on Kyle just then. "It's none of your fucking business," came the muttered reply, after a long pause. Without saying anything else, the blond abruptly stood, muttering angrily under his breath as he exited the cafeteria. It was a testament to just how livid he was that he didn't even bat an eyelash when he passed the pouty lipped, large breasted Porsche on the way out of the doors.

Kyle stared after him, totally nonplussed.

"Wow, you have an awful lot of sand in your vagina today, Kyle. Something wrong?"

The auburn haired boy tensed, shoulders going rigid. In his annoyance at Kenny, he'd somehow completely forgotten that Cartman – the root of all his suffering – was sat on just the other side of the table.

Fighting back a snarl, Kyle followed the blond's example, grabbing for his lunch tray and pushing up onto his feet. "You leave me the fuck alone, you fat bastard. I'm not in the mood for your games."

As he spun on his heel and left, the words that chased him out were, "What games? I haven't even started, yet..."

...

_**A/N:**__ Wow Kyle, temper, temper. And Cartman,_ down _boy!_

_What could be going on between Butters and Kenny? Why, oh Jesus _why_, can't Craig just leave poor, twitchy Tweek alone? And finally, will this story ever get more interesting? Wait until the next crappy instalment to find out!_

_On a more serious note... Any and all __**feedback**__ will be greatly __**appreciated**__, and I feel the need to add that, to those of you who reviewed the last chapter (__**N**__, __**thecrazierone**__, __**hanareta**__, __**Guest**__, __**TamiLove **__and __**babe**__) thank you so much! I'm not sure if my replies actually went through to you guys when I tried to send them like, a month ago (stupid internet connection /grumblegrumble/) but I just wanted to let you know that you're all very much appreciated!_

_-Aquaphobe, 24/08/2013_


	6. Chapter Five

_**Disclaimer:** __Why do you all insist on reminding me that I do not, and never will own any of the South Park characters? They __still__ belong to Matt and Trey... (Though I do, rather hesitantly, claim rights to all spelling errors from this point on.)_

_**A/N:**__ SO. I am very, very sorry for the long wait! I never expected college to drain my muse as much as it has... However, I __do__ come bearing gifts of apologies:_

_._

_I have a challenge for you guys. I've decided that the __**FIFTIETH REVIEWER **__for JotH will have the chance to __**REQUEST ANY SP PAIRING/GENRE **__for a standalone oneshot. The oneshot will be in dedication to __all__ my readers, but will be especially dedicated to my lovely reviewers. Please be signed in while commenting, so that contacting will be easier!_

_On another note, 7 reviews since my last update?! Guys, I'm ecstatic! Thank you all so much! /sobsob/_

_._

_**Junk of the Hearts**_

**Last time on JotH:****  
**_The auburn haired boy tensed, shoulders going rigid. In his annoyance at Kenny, he'd somehow completely forgotten that Cartman – the root of all his suffering – was sat on just the other side of the table.  
Fighting back a snarl, Kyle followed the blond's example, grabbing for his lunch tray and pushing up onto his feet. "You leave me the fuck alone, you fat bastard. I'm not in the mood for your games."  
As he spun on his heel and left, the words that chased him out were,_ "What games? I haven't even started, yet..."

Chapter Five: Grace Under Pressure

If Kyle had been asked, he wouldn't have been able to say what his last lessons of the day were, let alone what had been taught during them.

In fact, he was so fucking wrapped up in himself that he walked headfirst into Stan on the way out of the door. He'd been making such a quick exit from the classroom and down the hall to the room they'd all be serving detention in, that he hadn't even seen his dark haired friend there. Shoulders knocked, Kyle stumbled back as deep blue met forest green, and then a hand was reaching out and grabbing hold of his wrist.

_It was just to steady me_, he reasoned numbly, the surprise of the meeting meaning that he had absolutely no time to reconstruct the mental barriers he'd been working on for days. As such, the sensation of skin against skin sent a ripple of warmth shooting up his arm. This familiar awareness might have been pleasant just a fortnight ago, but his physical pleasure at the contact seemed hardwired to his emotions. The small, innocent touch made him feel nauseous with self-disgust.

Jesus Christ, he was weak willed...

Before his thoughts went anywhere else, he yanked his wrist free from Stan's hand and took a step back. Space meant safety, and he really didn't want to lose what could potentially be the last few minutes of their lifelong friendship, before they went to the detention and Cartman fucked it all up.

He peered back over at Stan as he came out of his own thoughts, and saw hurt there in his super best friend's face. He looked a little like Kyle had just slapped him. The inevitable burst of guilt for rejecting Stan bloomed behind his ribs with enough force to bruise.

The auburn haired boy winced and averted his eyes, trying to coax a sheepish smile onto his face as he scratched the back of his neck. "Ah, sorry dude," he said lamely, "you startled me for a second there."

There was a snort of bitter amusement – although the amusement seemed decidedly lacking. "Yeah, no kidding."

An awkward quiet fell between them, in which neither seemed to know what to say.

After what felt like an eternity Stan gave a huge, gushing sigh, hitched his textbooks a little higher under one arm, and said tiredly, "C'mon, dude. Otherwise we'll be late and Elwood'll keep us behind for another half hour."

Kyle just nodded, settling to walk half a pace behind the slightly taller boy. He watched the other boy's tense shoulders, the stubborn set of his jaw and the way he refused to look back at Kyle. Had the small gesture really hurt him so much?

After a moment or two filled with the noise of the students escaping from the Hell on Earth that was school to do whatever it was they did on the weekend, Kyle couldn't contain himself from blurting out, "Where were you at lunch?"

The quiet, somewhat hesitant question seemed to soften Stan down and he peeked back over his shoulder with just a hint of a smile on his face. "Where d'you think I was?"

The answer flew into Kyle's mind in a series of rather horrifying images, and he grimaced in disgust and no small amount of jealousy. "Oh. Right." His discomfort was plain in his voice.

This time Stan chuckled properly, his whole demeanor relaxing as a dazed sort of happiness rose up in his eyes. "It was just twenty minutes in the back of the library at lunch, but _fuck_..."

"Ugh, okay, I get it." _I really don't need the mental picture, thanks_.

There was definitely laughter lighting up Stan's eyes when he heard his best friend's tone, and he continued poking fun as they rounded the corner to the school counsellor's room. "You should definitely try dating sometime soon. It's the best, dude. I mean, Wendy was saying just the other day how Bebe still likes you. Something about you having a hot ass..." He couldn't stop himself from chuckling at Kyle's reaction: flaming red cheeks and a thoroughly embarrassed, incensed expression.

The whole joke about Bebe liking him had been ongoing ever since that time they'd built the clubhouse when they were kids. It didn't really affect him anymore, but hearing those last few words from Stan was just a little too much. He punched his dark haired friend lightly on the shoulder and said, "Shut it, you dickwad. You're gonna keep reminding me of that for the rest of my life, aren't you?"

Stan openly laughed now, and Kyle couldn't help but be buoyed along by the warm sound. "Until it stops annoying you, yeah," he agreed.

They both smiled at each other, the balance of their friendship restored, right until...

"That might take a while," came a dauntingly familiar voice, and Kyle's blood seemed to freeze in his veins as reality returned in ice sharp shards. His head shot around and his eyes were immediately drawn to Cartman, who was slumped nonchalantly against the wall outside Mrs Elwood's door. Sharp, dark brown eyes flickered from Stan to Kyle and seemed to hold him to the spot where he'd stopped. "As, to be perfectly honest, I don't think Bebe's really his type. Is she, Jewfag?"

Kyle couldn't seem to move. It was like he was a pinned butterfly; he had no where to go, and he could only stare with eyes that said too much, into the fathomless depths of the cruel, cold brown gaze before him.

The eye contact seemed to go on forever, before Stan unwittingly broke it by moving into Kyle's line of sight. "Stop being a dick, Cartman," Stan said lightly, apparently not having noticed the angry tension thrumming like raw electricity between the two childhood rivals.

"Fuck you, hippie. Your little boyfriend can look after himself," the words were said with far more venom than those that had been aimed at Kyle just a moment earlier.

"Jesus Christ dude, chill," Stan shot back, clearly incredulous to be on the receiving end of such unprovoked anger.

Kyle blinked heavily, caught off guard by the whole thing, and looked between the two larger built boys in bafflement.

Cartman looked like he might have said something else rude, when the door to Mrs Elwood's classroom (she taught psychology, too) opened and the frizzy haired, middle aged woman stuck her head out into the corridor.

"Oh, good, you three finally showed up," she said, peering down her hawk-like nose at all of them in turn. When none of the boys seemed inclined to react to her appearance by any means other than staring dumbly, she straightened up. "Well, come on in, then! Some of us have better things to do than waiting around for you lot to pick your jaws up off the floor!"

Cartman's cough sounded suspiciously like, "Stupid horse faced skank," as he sauntered lazily past the now openly scowling woman. Really, that expression did absolutely nothing for her already lacking looks, Kyle thought distractedly.

When they'd all filed into the room, she pointed at three separate desks, right on the front row. Kyle sat down on the desk closest to the door so that if Cartman really fucked him over, he could get out of there faster than Stan could projectile vomit.

Stan sat down on the desk next to him, and the fatass sat at the table furthest from the auburn haired boy.

Mrs Elwood folded her arms and peered down at all three of them in what she probably felt was an appropriately cross expression. To be perfectly frank, it just made her look constipated. "Right, Mr Marsh and Mr Broflovski, I want you to write, 'I will arrive at class on time,' two hundred times each." Between them, they'd probably written that sentence – or something thereabouts – at least four thousand times over. It wasn't exactly much of a deterrent for their misconduct.

She turned her sharp little eyes on Cartman. "As for you, Mr Cartman... I think it is appropriate that you write me an essay explaining exactly _why_ ethnic cleansing – with particular emphasis on Hitler's regime – was morally wrong. I want at _least _one thousand words on the subject." Oddly enough, Cartman didn't appear to have anything to say in defence of his self-proclaimed, childhoodidol. Instead he just crossed his arms behind his head and leaned back lazily in his chair, looking for all the world like he didn't care in the least.

Kyle was beginning to wonder if he'd imagined Cartman's sudden temper, out in the hallway. Even if he hadn't, he reminded himself that it really wasn't anything unusual. The fatass had always had a pretty volatile temper.

Mrs Elwood wandered off to some cupboards at the side of the room, and when she returned she set half a dozen sheets of paper down in front of each of them. "Now," she said in a very brisk manner. "I have a meeting I have to attend, and by the time I get back I want all of this work finished. If it isn't done, then I expect to see you back here again next Monday afternoon. Do I make myself clear?"

The only reply she got was an incoherent mumble from Stan, a miserable fidget from Kyle, and a provocatively huge yawn from Cartman. After a long moment of squinting crossly at them, the bushy haired woman grabbed a couple of files from her desk beside the whiteboard and strode from the room. The redhead watched her retreat with a distinct feeling of unease.

_Shit, don't go! Don't leave me here with _him_, you sanctimonious bitch!_

The second the door clicked shut behind her (the sound rung with a horrid, echoing finality in Kyle's mind), Cartman was leaning his chair back on two legs and kicking his feet up onto his table. The bottoms of his muddy boots landed heavily on top of the lined paper. "What a stupid whore," he complained loudly. "She could have set something even _mildly_ challenging. Seriously, this is so weak."

Before Kyle could think, his mouth spurted off in another one of his classic moments of verbal diarrhoea. It was like watching a train wreck unfold in slow motion, and not being able to do anything to stop it. "Well _maybe_ if you didn't mouth off like a Nazi bastard where the teacher can hear you, you anti-Semitic piece of shit, then you wouldn't be stuck in here with us."

"If only," Stan muttered, head already bent to his paper and once again blissfully ignorant of his super best friend's inner panic.

The brunet's head had turned very slowly in Kyle's direction and though his eyes had narrowed, housing a dangerously sharp glint, Cartman looked genuinely amused. "Why, Kyle, have you changed your tampon recently? Or is it that you can't get one up there, what with all that sand?"

Kyle opened his mouth to release another cutting remark, but shut it again very quickly, with an audible click when Cartman raised an eyebrow and sent a meaningful look down at the top of Stan's head. It's wasn't too hard for him to choose whether or not to react to the brunet's jibes, when a lifelong friendship was on the line.

_Besides_, a sensible voice spoke up from the back of his mind. _The sooner you do these lines, the sooner you get out of here. And, by addition, away from that fat tub of lard._

As though Cartman had heard the line of thoughts aloud, he released a deep chuckle, tilting his head back until he watched Kyle through half mast eyes. Resisting the urge to flip the bastard off, Kyle retrieved a biro pen from one of his textbooks and set the tip against the paper. His hand trembled imperceptibly – though whether it was from fear or frustration was unclear.

He wrote the first line out: '_I will arrive at school on time_.'

The faint sounds of two pens on paper; of multiple feet padding up and down the corridor outside; of speaking voices muffled by the walls. The sound of breathing: two steady; one slightly shallow.

'_I will arrive at school on time_.'

The hairs on the nape of Kyle's neck rose and goosebumps broke out on his forearms.

'_I will arrive at school on time_.'

Kyle gritted his teeth with the effort of ignoring the stare boring into him – the same stare that had been burning into his back all week.

All fucking week.

'_I will arrive at school on time_.'

A long, slow exhalation of air from the other side of the room; too deliberate and measured to be a true sigh.

Cartman was mocking him, sure that soon the redhead's fickle patience would crack.

'_I will arrive at school on time_.'

His attentions tried to stray from his paper, but he forced it back again.

_Just how precious is your pathetic little friend – your pathetic little crush – to you, Kyle? _The brunet seemed to ask with his eyes. _How much can you bear?_

A muscle jumped in his tensed jaw.

'_I will arrive at school on time_.'

His writing was getting progressively messier, the tighter his fist clenched around his poor, unfortunate pen.

'_I will arrive at scho—_'

And the second that Stan shifted slightly in the chair behind him, something in Kyle's head clicked.

A realisation, you might call it.

A realisation that this, right here, was the true start of the game. And from what Kyle could see, it was a game that could go two ways from here – Cartman was giving him that, at the least. Ordinarily, the brunet was an impatient, intolerant asswipe, but when he wanted something – truly wanted something – then Kyle knew he could wait for it forever. The bastard had even said so himself.

And so, here were the two possible options that Kyle was being given:

1. The game could be quiet and calm on the outside, yet corrosive for Kyle's nerves... a waiting game. The ultimate cat and mouse game of patience. Silence on his part and no danger at all, until Kyle couldn't bear it any longer. As soon as he cracked, he was giving Cartman the rights to tell the world his secret. He would have submitted to the other boy by taking his bullying and teasing in his stride, and so would be the quiet, helpless little victim that Cartman had wanted from the very first day that he'd pulled Kyle aside and made his intentions clear. This would be a simple solution for both of them, it would seem. Very tempting roles for them both to fall into – but then, denial always _was_ tempting.

2. On the other hand, it could be full out fights. It could be caustic and cruel from the very beginning – as openly aggressive as their relationship had been back when they were children. Kyle wasn't an idiot, and knew that _that_ wasn't all there was to it. There would be mind games and nasty little loopholes. They would still play the parts of predator and prey, no doubt, but here was a game that Kyle knew how to fight. He would be playing with fire and at any moment he might push Cartman too hard and be _burnt_, and that would be the end of the game.

Either way, they were fighting over the knowledge that could, undoubtedly, ruin everything (or rather, the _only_ thing) that was precious to him. Cartman was doing this because he revelled in the chase and the kill: he enjoyed seeing the labors of his work pay off, when the victim finally collapsed under the weight of it all. Until he drew out every ounce of fight left in Kyle, and only _then_ would he bring the final blow, of ruining the one thing he had left – the one thing this whole game had started for: Kyle's unrequited love for Stan.

Cartman liked a challenge – as long as the odds were in his favor.

And they were certainly in his favor here.

But what he seemed to forget, Kyle thought with a bitter sense of satisfaction, was that they'd been evenly matched from the very beginning. One of them would lose a match, only to win the next. It was balancing on the blade of the knife, and knowing that the blade could tip either way.

And Kyle, for one, didn't mind those odds – in fact, he reckoned that he had more of a chance at protecting his secret, if he took up an offensive stance.

He wasn't about to back down to the tubby bastard.

Somehow, the second he made this one irreversible decision, he felt almost all of his fear and anxiety melt away, as though on a warm breeze.

Cartman wouldn't say anything yet, because that would ruin his fun.

Kyle sat straighter in his chair, his hunched shoulders relaxing into a far more natural slope, and the tense, ticking muscle in his jaw easing until he could part his lips and let out a long sigh of his own.

Then, setting down his pen, he very intentionally turned back to Cartman, finally acknowledging the gaze that had been burning into him for the last fifteen minutes or so.

There was that unidentifiable emotion glittering, dark and intense, in the other boy's gaze again. He'd seen that look a few times now, and yet he was no closer to understanding it.

Taking it as a challenge (whatever it might be) Kyle lifted his chin a little higher in the air and, peering over the top of Stan's bent head at the other boy, he said, "You're on, tubby."

The answering smirk was more a snarl than anything else, but somehow it just couldn't disguise Cartman's glee at the blatant challenge.

Of course, the very intense and meaningful moment was over when, just a second later, Stan lifted his head, blinked owlishly at the two of them and asked, "Huh? Who's on for what?"

...

By the time he'd finished writing his lines Stan was just finishing up, too. Cartman had left maybe ten minutes earlier, shooting one last jibe over his shoulder as he went. Kyle had just viciously flipped him off.

It was strange, how he felt so liberated and yet so trapped in this situation, all at once. The paradoxes were mind boggling.

Distracted, he stood up and wandered slowly over to Mrs Elwood's desk, glancing briefly at the brunet's finished essay and reading messily scrawled title, '_Why Hitler was, in the Great Scheme of things, a Useless Dictator'._

Kyle stared at the sheet for a little while, rolling the title over in his mind. He absently sat his own sheets of paper down beside the essay, as his eyes skimmed over the first few lines. A moment later Stan was pushing his chair away from the table, and walking over to stand at Kyle's side. He dropped his papers on top of the redhead's and flung his arm around his shoulder.

"Come on dude, let's get out of here before Elwood gets back," Stan suggested, pulling Kyle – and his attention – away from the teacher's desk.

He ducked out of the hold as soon as it seemed reasonable, and Stan really didn't seem to notice his discomposure this time around. As they gathered up their books Kyle stole glances at his best friend, noticing the thoughtful look that had etched itself into existence between his furrowed eyebrows. Stan's thoughtful face made him look like he was grimacing, but Kyle couldn't help finding it stupidly endearing, in its own fucked up way.

They ended up leaving the school lost in their own thoughts, visiting their lockers to collect their bags and gym kits and then – by way of habit and unspoken agreement – clambering into Stan's car.

"Wanna catch some food at Shakey's?" Stan asked a little while later, as they approached a crossroad which would take them further into town.

Kyle, figuring that he was going to be late for dinner anyway, (and really didn't need an excuse to miss his mom's leftover Gefilte fish) agreed quite readily.

After parking up the car and making their way inside, they wandered over to a free booth by the window (as far from a young couple and their three shrieking offspring as possible) and ordered their meals. Stan decided on the triple meat supreme and Kyle chose to go for the standard margarita, because his mind was off chasing circles around a particularly fat mental block by the name of Cartman, and he really couldn't care what it was he ate. Just so long as he actually got to eat something soon. He hadn't really bothered with much food at lunch – probably not such a great thing, considering he was diabetic and all.

The wait for their food spawned a silence so awkward that it reached new levels of painful – well, Kyle could only speak for himself when he said that, but that was bad enough for him.

When a waitress arrived with their drinks, both boys accepted with overdone enthusiasm, and without further ado Kyle occupied himself with his diet soda.

"So..." Stan began, before promptly trailing off.

Kyle blinked out of his daze and refocused on the dark haired boy – who was currently trailing his finger through the condensation forming on the side of his drink. "So," was Kyle's equally in depth contribution to the conversation.

They almost trailed back into their previous silence, but Stan – with a dismayed look and a frustrated edge to his voice – grasped at the first subject that filtered through his head. "Token's throwing a party in a few weeks, dude. We should totally go. Things have been seriously quiet 'round here lately."

Kyle snorted. "By 'seriously quiet', I presume you mean there've been no invading nations, no pissed off celebrities, no natural disasters and no apocalypses around here lately?"

Stan seemed to appreciate his friend's dry humor, his expression melting into something along the lines of relief. "Well, come on," he starts off, amusement sneaking into his tone, "a peaceful South Park? I dunno what to do with myself when things aren't spontaneously combusting and there aren't people keeling over in the middle of the streets."

"Hmm, you're actually right, there. It's been almost normal." If by normal, he meant his whole world of make-believe crumbling to dust around him. Still, he'd seen worse in the past, and he'd probably see it again sometime in the near future. That was just how life in South Park rolled. "Should I be worried?" he joked.

Stan huffed a short laugh. "Probably. But seriously, you should come to Token's, dude. You can crash at mine after too, if you wanna avoid your mom."

Kyle didn't bother mentioning that it wasn't as if he'd be drinking or anything – they both knew it, and besides, Stan usually did enough drinking for the both of them. Kyle had begrudgingly enjoyed parties in the past, simply for the fact that Stan was hilarious – drunken mood swings, unprovoked affection and all.

_Now? That sounds like a shit idea_, Kyle thought to himself. The last thing he needed right then was blaring music, too many drunk people crammed together like horny, necking sardines, and absolutely no chance of joining in with the whole thing. Not like he would've wanted to, in the first place.

But he didn't say any of that aloud. Instead, he said, "Yeah, alright dude, that sounds awesome."

"Sweet." Stan face split into a very toothy grin.

From there, the conversation tapered off in random directions – from their upcoming finals (and how neither of them had actually done much proper revision), to Stan's next soccer game, and finally to the annoyances that were their parents – or rather, the annoyance that was Randy Marsh.

"And now he's claiming that because he's the closest thing that town has to a marine biologist, he needs to go on a work trip to Florida, to make sure that this whole 'alien species' gossip shit isn't legit."

Kyle tried really, really hard not to laugh – practically choked on the crust of his now cold pizza, in fact. "D-_dude_. I hate to say it, but this whole scenario sounds pretty damn suspicious." By this point, the boys had had around sixteen years worth of experience living through horrific, science defying disasters – and therefore knew the best ways to thoroughly avoid them. The second that they entered junior high, they dusted their hands of getting involved with all the drama, and tried to leave all the dangerous shit to the younger kids to sort out. Aside from occasional freak accidents, mass murderers and Cartman's gradually waning pranks, conspiracy theories and temper tantrums, they'd managed to keep their hands fairly clean.

Which was more than they could say about the older generations.

"Well, try telling him that! You'd think that after all the previous shit that's gone down because of him, he'd learn to back the fuck down."

"Remember that time when he convinced everyone that the world was going into the next ice age?"

Stan's lips twitched upwards against their will. "And that whole deal with the cooking show."

"What about when he made your family invest in Blockbusters?"

"And when he got into tween pop. _That_ was embarrassing."

"And that musical he wrote." Kyle added in, helpfully.

"Can you remember when we found a manuscript of that shit lying around in the dresser?"

They were both smiling now. "Yeah, dude – it was hilarious. Well, right up until your mom caught us with it."

Kyle relaxed back into his seat and stretched his arms out in front of him, feeling surprisingly relaxed, considering how he'd been feeling since he woke up that morning. He glanced over at Stan and felt a pleasant warmth settle in his chest. It was enough, to be like this. This way, he could just ignore the ever present ache of rejection and the sharp sting of anger he felt at the fatass.

Even though he kept getting flashes of memories – stuff like Cartman's knowing sneer when Kyle brushed hands with Stan and pulled himself back too fast to be casual, or Kyle's lingering glances at his best friend – luckily, these thoughts passed quickly enough: before he could feel more guilty and uptight about it all then he already did.

As they got back into the car a little while later, he just leaned his head back against the head rest and watched the street through the windscreen. It was around the time they were driving through the street that Butters lived in, that a thought occurred to him.

"Hey Stan?" He asked, breaking the silent reverie that they'd both slowly fallen into (this time, thankfully, the quietness was a lot more comfortable).

"Mm?" Came the fairly distracted reply.

"D'you know what's up with Kenny?" He decided it'd probably be better to ask this way, rather than revealing his recent overtures at friendship – friendship? Was that what it was? Oh God... – with Butters.

"Kenny? No, I haven't seen him around much recently. Think he's hanging out with Craig's gang more, actually."

This, for some reason, incensed the auburn haired boy. "What the fuck? But I thought he hated Craig."

Stan seemed to find that presumption pretty damn funny. "Dude, Kenny's friends with anyone who's got something to offer him. If he can bum a smoke off that douche, then he'd ditch us in a second."  
Kyle had to admit that that was a sad truth – though it really didn't explain why Kenny'd spent so much time apparently attached at the hip to Butters. What the hell would he get out of that friendship? Smiles, cuddles and sunshine? God knew they were about as different as two people could be. But now that they were pissed at each other, they were both moping. Pretty damn pathetic, actually. And it reminded Kyle a lot of himself.

"Well, that figures," was all he said in the end.

...

When Stan pulled up in Kyle's driveway without inviting Kyle round, or else inviting himself inside, the red haired boy assumed that Stan had plans with Wendy. Well, that or he thought Kyle just wasn't interesting enough to hang out with.

He couldn't figure out which one was worse.

Still, Kyle was just grateful for the fact that the weekend had rolled around again – and that meant that he'd managed to survive yet another week of hell.

In celebration of this small feat, he watched a couple of shitty horror movies with Ike (who'd, at some point in the day, broken his arm – he refused to say how) and then trailed, half asleep, up the stairs at around three in the morning, crashing out.

The rest of the weekend passed with little fan fair, though on Sunday he turned down the offer of playing some basketball with the guys and going to the movies after, in order to crack down on some much needed, seriously hardcore revision. Besides, with the prospect of Cartman, Stan and even Kenny being their, isolating himself (and forcing even more physics into his already crowded head) sounded fucking wonderful.

So, all in all, nothing much happened, and by the time that he was walking out the door on Monday, he was almost completely rejuvenated. The self-pity was still there, sure – as was the frustration and paranoia linked back to a certain fatass – but it wasn't totally unbearable now.

He got onto the bus, because Stan had sent him a text saying that he was running late, and sunk down in a free seat. The younger students swarmed around him, yelling and laughing and teasing each other. Kyle peered around, a small part of him amazed at it all. Had the coach always been this busy? How hadn't he noticed before now?

Weirdly enough, Butters got on at the next stop (even though his usual stop was a few before Kyle's) and shuffled despondently down the isle. He must have felt Kyle's gaze on him, because he looked up from his shiny black shoes for just a moment long enough to see that the auburn haired boy was there. He averted his big blue eyes as quickly as possible and attempted to walk by him at a quicker pace, but Kyle was too fast. He reached across the spare seat and grabbed hold of the sleeve of his jumper. Butters hesitantly stopped in his tracks when he felt the tug, and turned back around.

"Hey, dude," Kyle said casually, letting go of the blond now that he had his attention. "Wanna sit down?"

Butters fidgeted for a moment, indecisive, before nodding jerkily and joining him.  
Totally out of character, Kyle cleared his throat and asked, "Err, so, how was your weekend?"

The blond sent him a glance that might have been amused and knowing, if it weren't for the dead look in his eyes, and the huge bags right there underneath. As it was, he just appeared a little ill. "... Was okay," he mumbled, barely loud enough for Kyle to hear.

"Oh," was Kyle's somewhat stunted reply. Really though, what the fuck was he supposed to say? He could barely tell the git to cheer up, when he himself was still pining after Stan. "Well, have you started revision for finals?" He only asked for lack of any other conversation. He wasn't so good with small talk.

"A little," Butters murmured.

"I've done loads for science and math, but I'm putting off English Lit' for as long as possible. I've avoided doing any of the reading assignments for ages."

Blue eyes peeked up at him from below a fringe. "... I-I've done the Lit', but not much else. I don't much like the real sciency stuff."

"Yeah? Well, you're just about at the top of Lit class, right? Wish I could focus on the stories long enough to actually get shit done."

Butters shifted on his seat, saying hesitantly, "I-it's just an offer but I could always, y'know, help you sometime–– o-only if you wanna, o' course."

Kyle blinked at the offer, completely dumbfounded for a moment there. Before he could stop himself, he somehow ended up agreeing. "Yeah, that'd be... That'd be pretty good, actually. I could help you with a little of the science too, if you wanted?"

He was already mentally banging his head against the bus window – what the fuck was he doing?

Then, though, Butters met his eyes properly, and any misgivings that Kyle felt slowly started to wither. There was a hint of a smile tugging at the unhappy boy's lips. "Yes please."

Still baffled by what the fuck he was doing, Kyle shrugged. "Cool. Wednesday, then?"

Butters seemed to relax a little more in his presence after that, and it was only once they'd clambered off the bus that Kyle realised he hadn't asked about the whole 'Kenny situation', like he'd intended to.

In hindsight, it was probably a good thing.

...

The second that Kyle set foot in homeroom, he knew something was different – it was as if the atmosphere tilted, and the air surrounding him became static energy. His shoulders locked, his breath stilled, and his eyes were immediately drawn to a dark brown pair towards the back of the room.

The malicious glee in those eyes was like a slap in the face – a cold, hard shove back in the direction of reality. Nothing good could come from that look.

Why was it that every time he just about settled into a certain set of circumstances, someone came along and shoved his whole life off kilter again? Goddamn it, fate was a bitch.

And _Cartman_ was a total fucking bastard.

Gritting his teeth against the sudden burst of paranoid annoyance, he felt his shoulders squaring and his back straightening at the challenge. He _would_ keep his composure through whatever it was that that dickhead threw at him, and then he'd land some major hits of his own, too.

Sure, he was a couple of years out of practice, but he could do it – he was certain.

Kyle held the eye contact for as long as he could, before he pulled his eyes away and focussing on getting to his desk.

He was still glaring murderously at the white board ten minutes later, when an orange hooded shape fell into the chair beside him and hid his head in his arms, on top of his desk. Kyle's priorities shifted pretty quickly then, and he dropped the stink eye in favor of giving his friend a quick once-over.

He may have been a total dick to Kenny just a few days ago – and yeah, the blond made him want to tear out chunks of his own hair sometimes – but he could set aside his own issues for a moment or two, just to make sure Kenny was alright, couldn't he?

"Hey Kenny, you okay, dude?"

The head slowly lifted, and Kyle's heart gave a shocked pang when he saw the discoloration of bruises mottling the other boys left cheek and, from what he could see, trailing down, far below the hem of his coat.

Looking at the swollen eye, crooked nose and badly busted lip, Kyle felt positively ill – he didn't feel even the slightest bit of enjoyment at Kenny's pain, as he had when he'd hurt the fatass' (though, come on – no one could deny that Cartman had deserved it).

"Oh my fucking God, dude, what the hell happened to your—"

"A motorbike happened."

Kyle gaped at him for a moment, not comprehending any of what the blond was saying. He gulped down his slowly welling panic and managed to squeak out, "W-_what_?"

"I was walking to school because I missed my bus, and when I was crossing the road, a motorbiker came round the turning and knocked me over. No big deal." He shrugged with his left shoulder – presumably because his right was seriously fucked up.

"_No bid deal_?!" Kyle all but shrieked. Several people nearby sent them curious glances. Neither noticed that one gaze in particular held.

The blond tried rolling his eyes, but when that proved to be too painful, he settled for giving Kyle a long, flat look. "Keep your voice down, will you? Yeah, so I was in a bit of a road accident – so what? This sort of shit happens all the time."

Kyle couldn't even process that properly – what kind of excuse was that?! And why the hell wasn't he, like, in A&E?

But most importantly, how was he staying so calm? If Kyle had been in that sort of situation, he probably would've passed out because of the shock alone. Just thinking about it was making him queasy.

Taking a deep breath, he leant across the gap, unwittingly trying to get another peek at the expansive bruising tucked away in the shoulder of his friend's coat. Eyes tracking the mottled mark with a sick sort of fascination, he asked (quietly, this time), "Kenny, don't you think you should go see the nurse? That looks pretty serious." He couldn't keep the concern out of his voice.

"Nah, it's fine. Seriously dude, just leave it." There was a hard note creeping into his voice, and Kyle's frustration at being unable to help him mixed with his unease. Kenny carried on, unaware (or maybe just uncaring) of the red head's discomfort, and leaned closer in to whisper something urgent. Kyle couldn't look into those sharp blue eyes, and instead focussed in on his bloody lip. It looked disturbingly like the split skin of an over-ripe fruit. "Look, dude, just promise you won't make a huge deal of this. Don't tell Butters, either – you know he'd totally freak–"

"I wouldn't lean too close, Kenny," came a very ill timed, and very unwelcome voice from behind him. Kyle, who'd been wrapped up in what Kenny was saying, almost flew out of his seat – as it was, all he had time to do was jerk his head around to peer up at a looming Cartman in severe confusion. "You wouldn't want me to get the wrong idea. I don't like other people trying to take what's mine."

And then his hand was landing, heavy and warm, on Kyle's shoulder – fingers digging in just enough to ensure that Kyle's sharp shrug could do nothing to dislodge it.

The whole class fell silent – no one moved to pick up their jaws from the floor when the implications of what Cartman was saying clicked in their heads.

Even Kenny looked gobsmacked.

Heat flooded Kyle's face – from humiliation; from anger – and he stood so quickly that his chair toppled over behind him, and Cartman was forced to pull away. The larger boy did so with a grin which only widened, smug and malicious, when Kyle replied.

"What the fuck is _wrong_ with you, you twisted bastard? Where do you get off, saying that I'm 'yours'? I swear to God I will _deck_ your fat ass if you touch me again!" Kids at the other side of the school could probably hear that yell, but right then, Kyle didn't care. He felt like his vision had been obscured by a livid red haze, and all he wanted to do was wrap his hands around the fatass's neck and throttle him!

Cartman – unperturbed by the twenty-something pairs of shell shocked eyes watching, the accusing finger pointing at him from only a few inches away, or the classroom door slamming open to reveal a very, very late Stanley Marsh – stepped around the chair and back into Kyle's space, reclaiming the scant few feet he'd surrendered just a moment or two ago.

Kyle froze, unwilling to back off and yet suddenly unsure of how he was going to react. From behind the broad shouldered figure, Stan took in the scene, face confused and a little bemused from the odd scene he'd walked in on.

It was only when a warm puff of breath ghosted over his lips that his attention swung back to Eric Cartman and his sadistic, gleeful brown eyes – only half a foot from his own. Horrified, humiliated and furious, Kyle froze to the spot when Cartman's lips parted and he said, low and certain. "Oh, you _will_ be mine, Kyle – whether you like it or not. Make no mistake about that."

The flames of Kyle's fury blazed monstrously high then, and from the look on Cartman's face, he realised that he'd pushed the weedy, diabetic Jew too far.

Unfortunately, the realisation came too late. There was no way that the brunet could have avoided the knee flying up into his groin.

The fatass crumbled to the floor, and the Jew landed a good hard kick to his stomach, before Stan and Kenny were pulling him forcibly back.

A very collected voice in the back of his head had to hand it to him; he'd managed to bring the whole, potentially awful ordeal to a rather graceful conclusion.

Who ever said that Kyle wasn't good under pressure?

...

_**A/N: **__So, the plot thickens!_

_Thank you again to all those who have favourited, followed and reviewed! You guys are the best!_

_Remember to review if you want to get the chance to request a oneshot (details at the beginning of the chapter) and I hope you all enjoyed!_

_..._

_Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, do you guys want this story to remain in T territory, or would you like to see some more... _**Mature**_ scenes? Please let me know._

_-Aquaphobe (10/11/2013)_


End file.
